


On the Continuity of Consciousness

by al_fa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9829580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/al_fa/pseuds/al_fa
Summary: First-year Luna Lovegood is sure there is something deeply wrong with Hogwarts.





	1. Strange

**Author's Note:**

> AN AUTHOR'S NOTE  
> I dislike writing author's notes, since I'd like my works to stand on their own. I think this one needs some explanation, though.  
> This is a Harry Potter fanfiction, but it's also a crossover with several other Harry Potter fanfictions, one of which is a Harry Potter fanfiction fanfiction, making this a Harry Potter fanfiction fanfiction fanfiction. It should be possible to read (and understand) this work without having read any of those other fanfictions, but a few references may go over your head. As I don't want to spoil anyone's surprise, I've ROT13'ed the parts of the copyright notice in which those other works are mentioned.
> 
> COPYRIGHT NOTICE  
> This is inspired by and quotes several works.  
> Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling  
> Uneel Cbggre naq gur Zrgubqf bs Engvbanyvgl ol Ryvrmre Lhqxbjfxl  
> Fvtavsvpnag Qvtvgf ol Nyrknaqre Q  
> Gur Nevguznapre ol Juvgr Fdhveery  
> Fvflcuhf ol rfnzn  
> However, the biggest influence was a non-HP-related work: Frevny Rkcrevzragf Ynva ol Puvnxv W. Xbanxn.
> 
> LASTLY, A WARNING  
> This story is not exactly light-hearted, featuring grievous bodily harm, death, suicide and amateur philosophy. As violence isn't depicted graphically, I've decided not to use archive warnings. Proceed at your own risk.
> 
> Without further ado -

Luna had arrived at the train to Hogwarts long before any other student. She had wandered through the train trying to find the perfect compartment, and she had finally found it. It was a small, crooked compartment unlike any other, since it shared a wagon with the small room in which the Sweets Lady kept her cart. As such, there were only three seats in the compartment instead of the usual six, and the small table was irregularly formed.  
Luna had liked it immediately. After all, three was a far better number than six when it came to holding meaningful conversations, and the crooked, asymmetric arrangement seemed comfortable and inviting precisely because it deviated from the boring norm. She took a seat, closed her eyes, and began to daydream.  
Daydreaming was an activity Luna had mastered. Within seconds she had completely forgotten her surroundings, instead recapitulating the properties of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. It didn't take her long until she had a complete picture of the beast, its violet, scaly hide and yellow eyes with the peculiar w-shaped pupils. From there, she started to extrapolate. What would it eat with its thin, needle-like teeth? Where would it have to live, to get just the right amount of sun, which was essential to its metabolism?  
Luna had already spent quite some time on the subject, which was how she had acquired her knowledge of the Snorkack's appearance. Most people wouldn't have trusted long flights of fancy, but Luna wasn't like most people in any respect. When she had mulled over something for a long time, examined all possibilities and eliminated everything that seemed implausible, she already thought it quite likely. If she then saw it in a dream, it was as good as true to her.  
When Luna opened her eyes again, hours had passed and the train was already moving. A girl was knocking at the wall, since the compartment didn't have a door, relieved that she had gotten Luna's attention.  
"Hey, is this seat free?"  
Luna nodded. The girl didn't seem to trust observations very much; wasn't it clear as day that no one else was in the compartment, that there were no trunks stowed away besides Luna's, and that it was unlikely Luna was still waiting for anyone, since the train was already moving and Luna hadn't even had her eyes open to look around for someone? Maybe she just liked making conversation.  
"I'm Lea. You're a first-year like me, aren't you?", the girl asked. Luna smiled a little, as this had confirmed her hypothesis; the girl did like making conversation.  
"Yes, I'm Luna."  
A few seconds of silence passed, which Luna used to study Lea. She had brown skin and frizzy brown hair, which she wore in pigtails. At this, Luna stopped. She could have obtained more details about Lea, her clothing for example, but that seemed like a waste of time when they would be wearing Hogwarts robes shortly, anyway. The other girl just seemed so ordinary and uninteresting compared to the things Luna saw in her daydreams, as did most people.  
Lea tried to start the conversation up again. "So, what house are you hoping to get into?"  
Luna shrugged. "I don't really care."  
"You don't care? But the Sorting decides what sort of person you'll become, and even who you're going to be friends with!"  
"I don't think I'll let a hat decide who I'm going to be friends with. And I'm sure that the qualities of the houses aren't as set in stone as people believe they are."  
"But you can't just not care! What if you end up in Slytherin? Everyone in the other houses would avoid you, so all your friends would be Slytherins, and that's the first step to becoming evil. You don't want to end up evil, do you?" Lea's voice had grown louder, which Luna honestly didn't understand.  
She decided to pacify the other girl. "I am who I am, and no House would change that. Also, based on previous experiences, it doesn't matter at all where I end up, I won't have many friends, anyway."  
This did have the effect Luna had been hoping for: Lea grew quiet. After a moment, she spoke again, though this time in a calmer voice. "I think you're going to end up in Ravenclaw. It's the way you talk, you know? And don't worry about making friends. There's someone for everyone, and once you find them, you'll be more happy.  
Anyway, I'm hoping for Gryffindor myself."  
Luna was a bit confused. Why had Lea assumed that she was worried and unhappy? Try as she might, Luna couldn't see a reason for anyone to assume that, and besides, it was wrong - Luna had been quite lonely for the last two years, and she didn't feel as though she was missing anything of importance. Though the company was a fine thing, she also appreciated having a bit of peace and quiet to think.  
A few quiet minutes passed. Lea began to fidget, which was distracting, so Luna closed her eyes. She had just begun to pick up her train of thought about the Crumple-Horned Snorkack again when the Sweets Lady came around and readied her cart.  
"Good morning, little ladies. How about a chocolate frog?"  
"I'll take one", Lea said.  
Luna just shook her head. It had always seemed wrong to her to enchant chocolate to resemble a live animal. Was it indicative of a deeply-held desire among wizards to eat living frogs, which they could only indulge in in this form, since it circumvented a taboo on actually capturing and killing real frogs? She wondered if the chocolate frogs would sell better if their insides were closer to a real frog's.  
By the time she had gotten to that thought, Lea had already torn open the package.  
"Another Dumbledore! They must put him in like every other package, I've already got ten of him."  
Luna, meanwhile, was staring at the frog, which had hopped to the middle of the small table and seemed to be looking for an escape route.  
"Do you think they have feelings?"  
Lea seemed taken aback. "Luna, they're made of chocolate!"  
"Look at the small thing. It's like he wants to escape. Of course, you could say it's driven by instincts, but that's just semantics, isn't it?"  
Lea was quiet for a second, then she sounded angry. "You've got to make it all weird, don't you? I've lost my appetite."  
"If you honestly think you wouldn't eat it now, how can you want to have eaten it without thinking?"  
Luna reached out slowly, stroking the frog with her fingertips. It was cool and smooth, and though the chocolate was getting soft and sticky under Luna's touch, it didn't feel wet, as a real frog would have.  
"Well, aren't you a curious little thing?"  
The frog quivered slightly under her touch, as though it had understood her.  
Then it exploded.  
Within a split second, it went from being a reasonable approximation of a common frog to a horrid mess splattered around the entire compartment. Part of it must have been liquid, since solid chocolate wouldn't have spread quite that thin, and as Luna looked closely, she could see that there were more solid parts sticking to some of the larger stains, formed like small tubes and pebbles.  
Lea was wiping at her face with a tissue.  
"That's it!", she declared, obviously indignant. "You've been weird from the beginning, but making a chocolate frog explode, after you've almost convinced me that it had feelings? That's more than weird, that's twisted. You're going to end up in Slytherin and I'll be glad that I won't have to sleep in the same dorm as you!"  
She stood there for a few seconds, out of breath after her outburst. When Luna didn't answer at all, she finally turned around on her heel and marched away.  
Luna, meanwhile, was completely engrossed in watching what seemed to be tiny bones and organs in the remains of the frog. Ordinarily, chocolate frogs didn't contain any of those parts; they were made of solid, homogeneous enchanted chocolate. If one disregarded that this one frog might have been aberrant, which would have been a startling coincidence, something had changed its composition, likely directly before causing it to explode.  
Luna knew it couldn't have been herself. She didn't know any magic with those effects and likely wouldn't be powerful enough to cast it. Accidental magic was more than unlikely as well. Firstly, because she had gotten her wand a few days back, and accidental magic usually didn't occur after that, since a wand was a powerful symbol of control over magic, or so went the theory, at least. The second reason was, once again, the complexity of the enchanted frog: Usually, accidental magic changed things to a simpler state or produced chaos, and it wasn't good at interfering with the structured magic of an enchanted frog.  
Her next guess would have been an invisible older student pranking them. However, she still remembered having thought about chocolate frogs with realistic innards without telling Lea anything. A prankster would have been more likely to just explode the frog without any embellishment.  
Therefore, something was here which knew how to work complicated magic, was invisible and could read her mind. A thought should suffice, but Luna liked the dramatic tension of announcing her conclusion out loud.  
"I know you're there." Even among the many sounds of the train, her voice resounded in just the right way: Silent and ominous. Luna smiled.  
And was thoroughly surprised when Ginny Weasley came around the corner, looking slightly embarrassed. "Hey Luna. I didn't know whether to come in, you seemed busy."  
"Oh, hi Ginny. Take a seat, don't mind the froggy mess."  
Ginny sat down. After a moment's study of the chocolate stains, she took out a handkerchief. "Do you mind if I clean that up?"  
Luna opened her mouth, but in the tiny interval before she started to speak, a thousand colorful lights exploded behind her lids. She seized up and everything went black.


	2. Friends

"Luna, are you alright?"  
Luna woke up, torn from a black, dreamless sleep. Ginny's forehead was creased, her eyebrows lifted in the middle. Luna took a second to decode the expression and decided it was worry. She smiled her soft, slightly dazed smile.  
"Yes. Just a bit tired."  
It was an easy excuse because no one could have looked into her head to check. Headaches worked the same way. No one could do anything about lack of sleep or a headache, and so no one did anything, leaving her alone with the raging chaos. Luna closed her eyes again.  
"Luna, it's not usual to fall asleep mid-sentence. Has this happened before to you?"  
"It does, sometimes. But I've already been to a -"

"Most unusual. Most unusual indeed."  
"Do you understand what it is she suffers from?"  
"It seems to be a disease of the mind. I will have to consult with my colleagues."  
Blurred colours snapped into focus for a second as the healer hurried out of the door, leaving Luna alone with her Father. Xenophilius Lovegood turned towards his daughter, worry and hurt etched deep into the lines of his face.  
"I can't lose you, Luna. Not you as well."  
He pulled Luna into a hug, but by that point, she was already gone again, her body but a shell as her mind soared onto greater heights. What would she have answered, had she had time enough to answer him? "Don't worry"? That was part of it, she decided, and lost that train of thought.

"- healer, and they said they couldn't do anything. It's not too bad."  
Luna watched Ginny's forehead grow smooth again, and decided to close her eyes to get a bit more rest.  
"You know, Luna, I really don't think you should fall asleep on the train to Hogwarts. What if you're still half asleep when they sort you, and you are put in Hufflepuff as a result?"  
"I don't think the Sorting Hat is that easy to fool, Ginny."  
"Wait, they let a hat sort us? Who told you that? My family refused to tell me anything!"  
"I don't know, I must have read it somewhere."  
"Hmm." Ginny looked thoughtful. "You like reading? I don't remember that about you."  
"Oh, I don't know. I just pick some things up." In fact, now that she thought about it, she couldn't remember at all where she had read about the Sorting Hat, but memory was strange like that, sometimes.  
"Wouldn't it be nicer if they just let us make the decisions ourselves?"  
"You know yourself well enough to decide something that important?"  
"Sure. If you're so confused that you don't know what you want out of your life, just look into a magic mirror or something. Ron told me there was one in Hogwarts."  
Luna opened her eyes, startled. Something about the concept seemed eerily familiar.  
Ginny misunderstood her surprise and backpedaled: "Not that I think you're confused, or that I was talking about you particularly! I meant more of a general you."  
Luna closed her eyes again, trying to concentrate. The Sorting Hat, a mirror, how did those two fit together?  
"Hey, Luna?" Once again, Ginny had misunderstood her. "Please don't be mad at me. I didn't mean anything by it."  
Luna looked at her, and for a second, she saw Ginny as she really was: A young girl desperately in need of a friend who saw her as herself, and not just as part of a large family. The moment passed, but for once, Luna knew exactly what to say. "We're friends, Ginny, and nothing could change that."  
Then, the exhaustion from her earlier blackout caught up with her, and it was easier to pretend to be asleep for the rest of the train ride.

"I'm scared, Luna."  
Ginny stood close beside Luna, whispering to her so that the rest of the waiting first-years couldn't hear her. Why did she care?  
"I am too, Ginny."  
"What if the Sorting Hat puts us into different Houses?"  
Luna was baffled. "That's what you're scared of?"  
"Yes, of course!" Ginny's voice had risen above a whisper in outrage. "Don't you want to spend our time at Hogwarts together?"  
"Oh, of course. But what does the Sorting have to do with that? We'll have some classes together even if we aren't in the same House."  
"Well, if you are so sure of that, what are you scared of, then?"  
Luna looked at Ginny's small, freckled face, studied the curve of her eyebrows and the way her eyes were tightened, but she didn't understand. Was Ginny still frightened or angry, now? Had Luna said something to hurt her, and if so, what could she say to undo it? Why were emotions always so hard to understand? But time was ticking by in the world outside her head, and her long pause would seem strange by now, so she had to make a choice.  
"I'm scared of an invisible thing which can read my thoughts. It showed itself on the train and made Lea leave, and I don't know if it's followed me. For that matter, I can't be sure I've ever been truly alone at any point in my entire life, but now I know it's there and it can act on reality and I - "  
She managed to stop herself at that point. Ginny was now a step away from Luna and not looking directly at her, anymore. The other first-years around them were turned in Luna's direction, but they also stared blankly, unfocused. What did this mean? Luna could feel her heart beat faster. She was interacting with people she had never seen before, and they were all doing exactly the same thing, so it was likely an emotional cue she hadn't picked up on. The possibilities overwhelmed her for a moment. Far from knowing how to act, she didn't even know what was happening.  
It was a relief when the flashing colours came again and she passed out.

-~O~-

The Hat's voice woke her. It creaked like leather and settled like dust. It seemed like the voice itself was made of old age and the comfortable worn-ness of a favourite piece of clothing. Luna lost herself so much in the sound of it that she had no chance to make out the words.  
"I'm sorry Mr. Hat, could you repeat that?"  
"I said, 'Oh dear. This has never happened before...'."  
Luna felt an odd twinge at the words. "What has never happened before, you repeating yourself?"  
"How could surprise at repeating myself be the first thing I mention, when you would only ask me to repeat myself afterwards?"  
Luna thought for a second about that. The Hat had presented it as though it was supposed to be some sort of puzzling paradox, but she just couldn't see any contradiction. "Well, obviously you would be able to see the future of a student, but only while you were placed on their head. How else could anybody expect you to make the right decision while Sorting while still maintaining the privacy of every single student?"  
"How else, indeed. Did it occur to you, Miss Lovegood, that I might just extrapolate from your current state of mind? Maybe I could even ask you what you thought about the Houses yourself. If all else failed, I would still have a millennium's worth of wisdom to rely on." The Hat's voice had taken on a sarcastic inflection, but it softened with the next sentence. "Even though I can't see the future, we will find the right House for you."  
"What would be the right House for me?"  
The hat chuckled. "Well, you have some choice in the matter. You might go to Hufflepuff, where you will find support to last you long after your seven years in school. You might go to Ravenclaw, since though others might not see it, your mind is sharper than most. Gryffindor and Slytherin, I think, would be less ideal for you."  
"Why would I go to Hufflepuff for support, when Ginny will be in Gryffindor?"  
"Ah, sweet child." The hat sounded weary with age. "Not all childhood friendships last forever, and if you would stay too close to young Miss Weasley, she would feel burdened by you. Haven't you begun to notice it yourself? The little sighs when she thinks you're not looking? She'll grow tired of guiding you, of taking care of you because you're lost in your own head."  
"I don't think so." Luna's voice was firm with anger. "I don't believe in the present you're describing, and I don't think much of your predictions for the future either."  
"Such anger! Gryffindor and Slytherin seem more fitting now, indeed."  
"You've changed your prediction after a single rebuke from me? I don't believe I'll take your advice, thank you very much."  
"Young lady, I don't like your attitude, and it would be wise not to talk that way to a being as old as I."  
"I don't trust you. Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."  
The hat was silent for a moment. "Where did you hear that?"  
"I read it in a book, I think. Does it matter?"  
Somehow, Luna got a vivid impression of the hat shaking its head. "Different minds see the future differently, it seems. Though it's generally good advice, it doesn't apply right now, since you already put me onto your head, and I'm already inside your mind. Though it is a most formidable maze, it is as easy to change as any other."  
For a moment, Luna struggled to understand what the hat had insinuated, then she shattered into a thousand pieces.  
The Hat's voice woke her. It creaked like leather and settled like dust. It seemed like the voice itself was made of old age and the comfortable worn-ness of a favourite piece of clothing. Luna lost herself so much in the sound of it that she had no chance to make out the words.  
"I'm sorry Mr. Hat, could you repeat that?"  
"I said, 'Why, you've got one of the more interesting minds this old hat has ever seen.' But don't worry, I'm sure we'll find the right house for you."  
"I'm tired, Mr. Hat."  
"Of course you are, child. We'll be done quite soon. How does Ravenclaw sound to you?"  
Luna couldn't think straight through the haze in her head. There had been a question she wanted to ask. "What has never happened before, you repeating yourself?"  
The hat cursed. It was an odd curse, archaic enough to be quite incomprehensible, something about a frog, an eagle and a roll of twine. The hat took a deep breath.  
"Wait, Mr. Hat!"  
"RAVENCLAW!"  
Luna opened her eyes slowly. At the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall, students were cheering politely. As she made her way over to the Ravenclaw table, still feeling as though in a dream, she saw Ginny looking pointedly away and felt like a traitor. She took a seat at the table, not reacting to anything the other students said. If she had paid attention, Luna would have seen the way her classmates looked at her, would have heard them muttering. She didn't care, just as she didn't care about Ginny right now. She was lost in deeper thoughts.  
By the time the next student got sorted into Ravenclaw, the others had already given up on talking to her.


	3. Visions

Luna pushed open the door and exhaled. A corridor stretched out before her, black, glossy and seamless, as though hewn from obsidian in one single piece. Even though she was wearing an invisibility cloak and disillusioned, her form changed with Polyjuice and her presence hidden with an assortment of obscure spells, she didn't feel safe, exactly. She was trespassing into the Department of Mysteries after all, the Ministry's holiest of holies, the inner sanctuary sheltering their darkest dealings. Even disregarding the fact that, just by being here, she was breaking enough laws for aurors to be authorized to use lethal force against her, she was in the most dangerous place she could be in right now. The Department of Mysteries housed an assortment of monsters and devices which were badly understood and extremely deadly at best.  
Luna didn't mind. She was an investigative journalist, after all.  
Right now, she was pursuing a story so controversial that the Quibbler hadn't even hinted at it, yet. She hadn't told anyone of her suspicions, not even her friends, though she normally trusted them with her life. This was bigger than anything else, even Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. It was her greatest fear.  
Security was lax in the Department of Mysteries, probably because even the more risk-loving aurors didn't want to be posted on guard duty in a place where employee mortality rates were rumored to be higher than a hundred percent. Researchers in the Department of Mysteries were called Unspeakables, not because they worked with things no one should speak of, which would be bad enough, but because many of the regular Ministry employees were convinced that even speaking of anyone connected to the Department, as it was called, caused bad luck. Luna supposed it might be true; she also supposed that assassinations would explain the high mortality rates as well as the people's hushed fear of the place. It certainly fit with the Ministry's style, as far as its conspiracies were concerned.  
This was the darkest of dark places in post-Voldemort Britain, and she would bring its ugly heart to light.  
She entered a circular room with doors all around. Her sources, whose names had been redacted, had told her of this. These rooms were dedicated to abstract concepts, with their contents ranging from overly literal, such as a "space" room filled with floating planets, to ridiculous, such as the "love" room which was never to be opened, to chilling.   
It was the third kind of room she was looking to open, gather evidence, and leave. Though the floor plan was ever-changing and the doors were almost indistinguishable, the Unspeakables were taught to notice the minute differences in the grain of the wood. It hadn't been easy to get an Unspeakable to speak of such matters of security, but Luna had managed. She had always been attentive to detail, and it was no challenge for her to find the right door.  
She rested her fingers against the polished wood. If she was right, opening this door would be the most dangerous step she had taken tonight. How much she would learn - even her mother's death might finally be fully explained, the ministry's dark conspiracies uncovered and many wrongs righted. Her fingers trembled, involuntarily drumming an irregular rhythm against the door, but she couldn't turn back without sating her curiosity.  
She pushed open the door and glimpsed the unthinkable.

She didn't know how much time had passed. She was shivering, covered with cold sweat. Her back was against a smooth stone wall, her knees pulled up against her chin. Around her was a room she hadn't seen yet. It was gigantic, easily several hundred meters long into every direction, though distances were hard to judge against the featureless black walls. The room was empty, and Luna sighed, relieved, when she realized where she was.  
This was the chamber of loneliness; its inhabitants would always be lonely. In other words, nothing could harm her here, since even a mindless creature bent on killing her could be considered company. The room held its own dangers, with inhabitants going insane from long enclosure. If Luna's sources could be believed, the worst part of the experiments down here had started when the test subjects were lonely enough to treat the walls and floor as friends, and the room tried to deprive them of even that company. Luna didn't worry about that happening, at least not right now.  
But how had she gotten there? She remembered pushing open the door to the room which was rumored to contain the source of magic. She must have run from there in unthinking haste, leaving her cloak behind. There must have been something truly terrifying in there. The Unspeakables must have dabbled in the kind of research that had killed Luna's mother.  
She stood up slowly, still shaking and realized that she was bleeding from a long, ragged gash in her left leg, as though a claw had raked her flesh. Even though she couldn't remember what she had seen, she could spin a story from that alone. It would be threadbare and frustrating, implying more than it explained, but the Quibbler's readers were used to loose ends.  
Something could have followed her from that room. For all she knew, the door was still open, the Department by now filled with horrors too strange to even remember, and this chamber was the last safe place. Fortunately, there was no need to risk anything, since she had made arrangements for a case where she was unable to leave.   
She took out a piece of parchment and a special enchanted quill, knowing that its twin back home would mimic its movement. She sat down cross-legged, gathered her thoughts, and put the quill to parchment.  
An incorporeal hand crushed her heart with too many fingers.   
As her brain used its dwindling supply of oxygen to simulate agonizing pain, her last thoughts dwelt on the bitter irony in her situation. She, of all people, should have known that it was possible to be alone in the company of others, as long as they didn't care about you at all.

-~O~-

Space travel was humanity's way of reaching at eternity. Even just considering the stars from the relative safety of earth, of the vast reaches of the universe and the temporal abyss from which it came led to feelings of vertigo. Once one was actually in space, so far from earth that it was merely a pale blue dot in the sky, that the sun was far, far dimmer than a full moon would have been on earth, the awareness proved inescapable: Mankind was insignificant, and the universe couldn't be grasped.  
Luna had progressed far beyond that feeling of insignificance. She had left the solar system behind three thousand years before.  
The first pioneers of magical space travel couldn't have been more different. The first had been a Gryffindor, boldly going where no man had gone before. After being the first wizard in earth's orbit, and later the first human to set foot on Mars, Venus, Mercury, several of Jupiter's moons, Saturn and even Pluto, he had deemed all heroic feats done and settled down, content to rest on his laurels.  
The second had been a seeker of knowledge, and he had set out for a far and lofty goal, as his contemporaries were still debating prosaic matters of planetary industry, property and profit. He still hadn't found what he was searching for, and though he might not admit it to himself, other projects had become more important to him than his quest. He barely even spent time in his ship any more, using the vanishing cabinet once a month to check on its progress.  
The third had been Luna. At one point, she had declared herself to be too weird for planet earth, and none who knew her could have argued the point. She had chosen a direction and set off, sightseeing on various exoplanets, and, when that became boring, since most exoplanets were lifeless deserts of rock and sand, she had charted a course beyond the outer edges of the milky way.  
It goes without saying that faster-than-light-travel was feasible with magic. In fact, there were several different ways to accomplish it, but even magical engineering had limits. With all current upgrades, Luna's spacecraft topped out at thirty c.  
She was, by now, 50.000 light years away from the sun, far beyond the edge of the galaxy, and she still couldn't get enough of space. True, there wasn't anything here, not in the conventional sense: Beyond the thinly spread matter of galaxies, space was as close to true nothingness as anything could be.  
For Luna, that just meant that nothing could impede her imagination. Even without retreating inside herself, even without the distractions provided by the pocket-world inside her vessel, she would never lack entertainment as long as she still had her mind.  
For example, she could posit an ecosystem in this total waste.  
Anything existing here would have adapted to long, uninteresting periods of travel. Momentum was conserved, so propulsion would only be an issue at the beginning. The greatest danger would be posed by the loss of waste radiation, so the creature would be as completely isolated as possible. Most likely, it wouldn't be visible to most systems of perception.  
It would be economical for such a creature to spend vast periods of time in a state of stasis, until it chanced upon a stray comet, a solitary star system - anything it could use to replenish its stores of energy.  
In fact, Luna pondered, what spoke against such a creature being out there, right now? It might not be able to interfere with her ship, at the speed she was traveling, but then again -  
The sound of claws tapping on the outer hull interrupted her thought process. In her pocket universe, she couldn't hear it in the classical sense, but the ship's systems interfaced with her mind. In the same way, she could see that a vast darkness was enveloping the ship, extinguishing the stars. Something was surrounding her ship.  
Sadly, after centuries of calm, Luna wasn't used to thinking quickly anymore.  
SECURITY WARNING  
SHIELD SPELLS BREACHED  
The ships outer hull was corroding, goblin-forged metal turning into dust. Luna tried to think of some solutions, but the security system of her vessel wasn't really designed against this sort of threat. She could cast at the predator eating her ship, if she left the safety of her pocket world. Which spells could she use?  
SHIP COMPROMISED  
SHUNTING POCKET UNIVERSE  
It had happened too quickly. The ship had been eaten, and Luna was trapped inside the pocket universe. She sighed. There were an infinity of escape routes left to her, but they all led back to earth. She would have to start anew from the beginning, and that would take a figurative eternity.  
No matter. She could take a different route, this time, see some other solar systems on the way. Maybe she could even stay for a while on earth; most likely, enough had changed to make the planet interesting again. Maybe someone had even found the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, by now.  
She flinched when the system alerted her again.  
POCKET UNIVERSE COMPROMISED  
It was simply impossible. The pocket universe didn't have any connections at all to the patch of space the ship had been in. Her emergency conditioning kicked in, and she poised two fingers to snap, ready to escape.  
Time slowed down as her universe collapsed around her, and she never managed to finish that motion.

-~O~-

"This is is the end," Luna wrote. "With my death, a lifetime of work will be wasted. I won't pass it on to anyone. There's an outside chance it won't be dismissed as the ravings of a madwoman, that someone might pick up this torch I have dropped. Even if they did, I know now it wouldn't be of any use. For years I've gathered what little scraps of information I could, trying to condense them into something solid. I never did get a clear picture, but the little things I've pieced together have impressed upon me the sheer magnitude of the problem. It's a Gordian Knot of absurd proportions and devious simplicity; any attempt to disentangle it is doomed by design."  
Luna closed her little journal, clasping it between both hands. Its small size was deceptive; cleverly enchanted to hold far more than the original 200 pages in its worn leather binding, it contained her life's work. In some ways, it contained her life. There had never been much difference between the two.  
She leaned back on the park bench. It was a muggle construction, a weathered installation of stained concrete and rusted metal. Its design was twisted between the concerns of aesthetics, economics, and the deliberate deterrence of homeless people. The designers hadn't been asked to make it comfortable, and so it wasn't.  
Though Luna didn't know anything about the intricacies of designing park benches, all this knowledge was at her fingertips. It was a simple matter of extrapolation, and with a few minutes' thought she could have derived the exact curves of the bench. No one would have believed her, of course, since such a feat would have been unbelievable in many respects. What of the little shifts of mood in the designers, they might have asked, or how could you assume that all parameters are optimized. She didn't. She extrapolated, and she was right often enough that it was a reliable tool, and wrong often enough that others could dismiss her.  
Reluctantly, she stood up, and began another walk through the park. Contemplating her surroundings was a nice distraction, but ultimately without purpose. She had to think about the journal, and how it should end.  
She had referred to the problem as a Gordian Knot. It was fitting, in many ways. Not only did it pull itself tighter with every attempt to tug at it, the abstract concepts involved exhibited some topological similarities to multidimensional knots, in that they wound back upon themselves. Examining small, isolated parts did not show it to be impossible, but in its entirety it was.  
Yet, Alexander had parted the Gordian Knot, even solved it, in a way. He could only do it because he thought out of the box, as muggles said. This wasn't really an option for Luna; any box that encompassed her problem contained her as well. She could not provide an outside context solution, at least not as far as she knew.  
Luna ruminated on it while she finished her circle around the small park, reaching the bench again. An old and ragged man was sitting on the bench, a muggle, by the looks of him. There was space enough for two, so she sat down beside him, opened her journal again, and wrote down her thoughts on context and the box.  
"You seem stuck," the man said. He was speaking English, which was, while not strange per se, still not the natural first choice of language here in eastern Europe.  
Luna looked at the man. Her face was as neutral as always. "You have been reading over my shoulder." It was intended merely as an observation, without any kind of judgement.  
The man grinned in the mirthless way of a gorilla, showing old and failing teeth. "Oh, I have, but it would have been obvious anyway. You pace around this park, sit down to write a paragraph, and stand up to pace again. You've been at it for hours."  
She had been extrapolating from the language he had chosen, but his was a fine answer anyway. It proved that he was able to extrapolate from observation, as well, and that was as good a basis for communication as any. She told him that.  
"Ha." His laughter was monosyllabic and dry. "You're clever, and you think you've figured it all out."  
"I have."  
He met his eyes for the first time, and his green eyes seemed strangely deep. From his intensity she thought he might not be a muggle at all, and looking into her mind. Legilimency. But she discarded the thought. She was far more sensitive to magic than most other wizards were. She would have noticed.  
"There's nothing left to do but finish your business here, then." He looked around, taking in the grey and dying park. "And we both know that you're not here to finish a book no one will ever read."  
Luna took a deep breath. Other people had, at some point, lost their light for her, the spark that led her to believe they had any kind of consciousness at all. Yet, she felt a strange bond with this man. She extrapolated and spoke his next sentence in unison with him.  
"After all, there's no life in the ruins of Chernobyl."  
It was hyperbole, since people were still living and working here, fifty years after the nuclear catastrophe. Yet, it was also entirely true, as they could both attest.  
The man had wide eyes. "You..." He shook his head and walked away. After a hundred meters, he looked back, but she didn't meet his eyes.  
He was entirely right. She didn't have to finish her book, shouldn't even let it remain after her death. After all, someone might find it, and with the right context, it could be a tome of forbidden lore. Wizardkind didn't need more of those.  
She touched the tip of her wand to the book, the incantation in her mind, before the cracks in the sleek piece of pale wood reminded her it wasn't safe anymore.  
She took out the muggle matches she had taken to carrying around and fumbled a bit before she managed to light one. A muggleborn might have had an easier time, as with her life's work, would have seen and understood earlier. But this was her burden.  
The book took fire as though it was eager to be consumed. Were the enchantments somehow fuelling it, or did the world as a whole want to see it gone?  
She set the tip of the wand at the side of her neck. This last thing would be a hassle without magic. Of course, muggles did it all the time, but they failed a lot of times as well, and Luna wanted to succeed in one last thing, even though the world would end a bit earlier as a result. Even if her wand shattered, this time, even if her magic came out in a simple and violent burst, it would be enough.  
In the final reaches of her life, she looked at the book still burning on the ground. The light and warmth were strangely comforting, and she found solace in the fact that at the end of her life's work was something almost alive.  
She couldn't help but think of the man's eyes. There's still life in the world, a faint voice in her mind seemed to say. So many of those you've grown up with are still alive and happy. They don't fear their magic as you do, and though they're thoughtlessly burning their world, why shouldn't you as well? If nothing matters, be happy.  
For a moment, it was as though she had passed through her darkest and most narrow time, with a nihilistic flame of hope freshly ignited. She made to lower her wand.  
Something bumped against her elbow, or maybe it was a muscle spasm brought on by sleep deprivation. In any case, her hand tensed and shot up, the wand shattering, a splinter burying itself through the soft flesh under her ear and into her brain.

-~O~-

"Luna, you have to see this! The detectors are going crazy!"  
Luna blinked. She was close to a hundred and eighty, and getting up in the morning was getting harder with every decade. In fact, it was difficult enough without being woken by an overexcited grad student. She pushed herself up and glanced reproachfully at her uncomfortable bedding. Even with all their mighty magics, wizards still hadn't invented a camping bed suitable for the back of an old woman. Was it incompetence, or were the wizards who had crafted her tent just convinced that it had to be part of the experience?  
She shook her head. It was just as likely that they had formed the tent to act on her own assumptions, as well as a million other possible hypotheses, and she had no time to sort through all of them right now.  
Grumbling and half-asleep, she left the tent. Dema, whom she thought of, somewhat old-fashionedly, as her apprentice, was turning dials and pushing buttons with her peculiar brand of enthusiasm.   
"What is going on, anyway?", Luna asked.  
"It's absurd! The thaumometers are registering over 300 mG, with levels that are still rising. I've been trying to triangulate, and I think it's just a few kilometers off that way." She pointed in the direction of the mountain ranges which jutted out from lush, almost untouched forests.   
Luna studied the numbers Dema had jotted down on a scrap of parchment. Even though she had never been as enthusiastic as some others about the wizarding world's scientific revolution of the twenty-second century, she couldn't deny how useful some of these tools were. The thaumometer sensed magical emissions, making it a necessity for expeditions hunting magical creatures. Even with the newfangled equipment, though, she had experienced enough disappointments to dampen her enthusiam.  
"Now, Dema," she told her young apprentice. "You shouldn't get too excited. It's probably just a detector malfunction, a spike in background radiation, or a wizard having a lark with some fireworks."  
Dema scoffed. "Fireworks, in this wilderness? You're just grumpy you didn't get to sleep in. Let's investigate!"  
Luna smiled. It wasn't quite the easy, tranquil smile she had sported when she had been young, but there was still warmth behind its weariness. She packed the tent with a few wand motions, while her apprentice stowed the detectors, and they set off for the mountains. After all, even after almost two hundred years of failures, this could be the big one.

She didn't get excited until she saw the paw prints. Their elongated form, the thin claws, even the small mounds of earth thrown by the Snorkack's strange gait - it was exactly the kind of trail she had dreamed about. She broke down crying. She had never believed in hiding her emotions, and the older she got, the less necessary it seemed.  
Dema looked away, slightly embarrassed. "So it's the big one, then? Even with the Crumple-Horns?"  
Luna wiped at her tears, the old smile on her face. "Look closely, at the outer edge of this one. This Snorkack has long outer toes, to balance the weight of the crumpled horn. It's not much of a difference, not more than a few millimeters, but it's certainly there."  
Luna saw the look of wonder on Dema's face and knew that Dema was finally taking the Snorkack theory seriously. The girl had been respectful enough, but no one, not Luna's father, not even her husband, had ever been convinced that the Snorkack existed as a matter of fact. Luna had never been able to explain it as well as she would have liked, but she had known, not merely suspected, that there were Snorkacks out there.  
"So?" Dema was grinning widely now. "Do we have a chance of catching one?"  
"Oh, yes. It's been here very recently. You can smell it."  
Dema sniffed. "I don't...", then comprehension dawned on her face. "Ah! You're right. It can only be smelled when you know it's there."  
Luna nodded. It was one of the more mysterious aspects of the Snorkack; the creature was perceived differently by true believers.  
Once again, tears welled up in her eyes. "If only Rolf could be here."  
Dema looked up from the trail. "Wait. Do you hear that?"  
Luna shook her head. The Snorkack shouldn't make much noise.  
Dema nodded. "It's pretty high-pitched, stands to reason that you can't hear it. Follow me." With that, she cast a simple Propulsion charm, pointing her wand at the ground and flying through the canopy.  
Luna started on the wand motions - if the youngster thought she could shake off Luna that easily, she had a surprise coming - but just as she pointed her wand at the ground, something sharp pierced her back, and the uncontrolled movement caused by her spell ripped her open. Disemboweled, Luna had barely a second of conscious thought left, and it wasn't enough to process the shape of the claw she had felt and compare it to her imagination.   
Not only did she never find a Snorkack, she couldn't even be sure whether a Snorkack had found her. 

-~O~-

It was still dark when Luna woke up, and she felt empty. Dreams often contained pieces of recent memories, she knew, garbled and recombined by the sleeping mind. They could also reflect deeper, more permanent imprints on the mind, and in the wizarding world, prophetic dreams weren't unheard of, as well.  
In any case, this did not bode well for her.  
After a while, she went back to sleep.


	4. Faith

"You're sure it wasn't Wrackspurts?"  
"I'm sure, Luna. How could Wrackspurts have caused this incoherent mess of a past?"  
"Well, they're - "  
She was interrupted by Ginny. "If I'm understanding you right, Colin, you think there's been someone no one remembers in Hogwarts last year."  
"Yes! Everything just doesn't fit. From the first day, unprecedented things happened. First, there was the incident with the Sorting Hat no one wants to talk about. Usually, when the Sorting Hat does something strange, we would expect a Sorting to be involved, and therefore, a student.  
After that, there was a steady escalation of bullying, the kind that really hurt people. In situations like that, there's almost always a student standing up to the bullies, resisting the authorities' attempts to defuse the situation. Of course everyone remembers how David Monroe ended the conflict, but no one seems to remember how it was started.  
Now, remember Battle Magic? Records of the first years' battles tell of armies with clearly defined motifs and intentions, as though they were led by charismatic leaders, but in the first battles, Neville and Ron clearly weren't the forces they later became. Someone else must have led those armies unofficially, but no one remembers.  
Finally, there's You-Know-Who's second fall."  
"What about his second fall?" Ginny sounded concerned.  
"Do you remember anything about the first time he supposedly fell?"  
Ginny looked at Colin as though she was slightly disoriented. "He... he disappeared. He was beaten."  
"By whom?"  
"I don't - look, Colin, those are all interesting questions, but there's got to be answers. Have you looked in the library? Have you asked any of the older students?"  
"I didn't have to." Out of a pocket, Colin drew a piece of lined muggle parchment which was filled with his tiny, cramped script in faded ink. The edges of the parchment were slightly burned. "This was written in invisible ink. Nothing fancy, just lemon juice. It contains notes from interviews with Ron Weasley, Tracy Davis, even Neville Longbottom. There are all kinds of little contradictions and obvious holes. It's impossible to establish a timeline of last year, it just doesn't have anything in common with a reasonable story at all!"  
"So... you did ask the older students?"  
"Obviously, but I don't remember any of it!"  
Ginny was dumbstruck, and Colin was clearly scared out of his mind. Luna had to restore sanity to the situation.  
"Wrackspurts explain everything. They confuse and confound, and in retrospect, large flocks of wrackspurts have been behind every conspiracy of the modern wizarding world."  
Ginny rolled her eyes. "That's nice enough, Luna, but I really have to go. I don't want to miss lunch."  
When they were alone, Colin grabbed his temples as though he was nursing a headache. "Okay, Luna. At this point, you're the only lead I have. How do we find these wrackspurts?"  
"Oh, it's simple, Colin. They're already here."  
"I don't see anything. This hallway's practically empty."  
"I can show you." Luna concentrated. She had had ample opportunity to practice, lately. Her mind's floodgates opened, and once again, Colin's eyes widened with fear. His eyeballs rolled upwards until only the whites were visible, and he fainted. As he lay on the floor, he kept on gibbering madly.  
Luna picked up the lined muggle parchment and frowned. What had Colin said had been wrong with the story? Contradictions and holes. He wanted a coherent timeline. Right now, she had no idea how to fix this, but she was all out of lemons anyway. Maybe she would find inspiration on the way to the kitchens.

Inspiration came to her, at last, in a dream, as it always did. It was spoken by a hollow voice that belled forth from a gap within the air itself, a gap that opened upon a fiery abyss. Or at least, that's what the wrackspurt that relayed the message told her. Its many mouths quivered, shaping infinitely small sounds that fell together into a coherent name. "Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres", it said.  
And just like that, everything fit.  
Luna woke with a start, and began to write. From time to time, she had to squeeze fresh lemon juice, and the bad light in the Ravenclaw common room made it hard to see. Besides all that, Colin Creevey's handwriting really was terrible as well as terribly exhausting to imitate. However, her inspiration was transfixed. She didn't forget a single facet of the absurd story she had seen in her dream, packing it all into fictional interviews with those whom she now knew as Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres trusted lieutenants, his enemies and his admirers. And what a story it was! It had an ancient and mad wizard, a sidekick with the makings of a true hero and a protagonist who was so deeply flawed that he had managed to convince not only himself he was right, but also the universe itself.  
Luna wrote the last line on a sheet that still seemed as empty as when she had begun. This time, she was truly proud of herself. Though she still had no intuitive sense of plot holes and contradictions, she had the vague feeling that Colin would believe this one.

The very next morning, she snuck the paper into Colin's pocket when he was eating breakfast. She spent the day giddy with anticipation. Though her classes were, as always, filled with systematic misinformation planted by several conflicting secret societies, and her classmates hardly could have cared less for her, she didn't stumble. This time, Colin would believe the false secret, and then, she could tell him about all the real secrets no one ever believed her about.  
It was soul-crushing on several levels when she found his petrified body with the piece of paper still stuck in his pocket. Of course, she took it back. If the wrong person found it on him, they would just throw the empty and crumpled piece of parchment away, and it held too much meaning to just let someone do that.  
Luna went on with her day. It hadn't even occurred to her to tell someone about Colin's petrification.

At night, she had the strangest dream. It was tranquil, unlike her usual dreams, in which strange shapes and colours fought for attention with shrill sounds.  
She was in her dorm at night, and a boy was sitting on the edge of her bed, face turned away from her. Somehow, it didn't seem like she had anything to fear from him, though his face was obscured under a veil of shadows.  
"Luna Lovegood. You just might be the most extraordinary student among the first-years."  
"I am?" Truth be told, Luna hadn't ever paid enough attention to the other first-years to find out how extraordinary they were.  
"Oh, indeed. I don't mean to imply that you don't have fierce competition, though. Colin Creevey, for example, was a most interesting contender until about this morning."  
"Why is he disqualified now? Isn't he more unique, now that he's the only first-year made of stone?" Sarcasm wasn't something Luna employed, ever. She was honestly curious about the criteria of uniqueness her visitor employed.  
"He won't be the only one for long, if this petrification proliferates." The figure chuckled. "But let's hope it doesn't come to that. If you do your best, a catastrophe might still be prevented."  
"You don't have to worry on my account, I'm always doing my best."  
The visitor put his hand to his forehead, his fingers flattening the shadows. "I'm trying to imply something here, can't you just try to drop some subtle hints that you understood what I was really getting at?"  
"Why can't you just tell me? It would certainly lead to fewer misunderstandings."  
"Okay. I'll need a moment, though, I have to salvage the dramatic tension."  
"Take your time, I'll be here the entire night."  
After a minute, the figure spoke again. "It falls to you, Luna Lovegood, to save Hogwarts from certain doom! If you choose to help me, you will become... a double witch!"  
"A double witch? Now that's silly."  
The boy sounded really exasperated now. "Yes, my public speaking abilities have deteriorated over the past few months of isolation. Are you in or not?"  
"That depends. Do you think Crumple-Horned Snorkacks are responsible? I don't think I could fight them. I don't think I even have a chance at finding one."  
"Don't you suppose this is rather the domain of Wrackspurts?"  
"If it was Wrackspurts, we wouldn't even have found a trace of Colin. They're secretive." Luna pointedly ignored the dry sarcasm in the boy's voice.  
"You learn something new every day. I do think you should be more inquisitive from now on, though. You didn't even ask me who I was."  
"That's just because you're obviously Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres. Sneaking into a girl's bedroom is your way of convincing yourself that Dumbledore was your true mentor, not Quirrel. You should write a message or two in my potions book, while you're at it."  
"Ah." For a second, the boy was at loss for words. "That's certainly... insightful."  
"Luna Lovegood, amateur sleuth, at your service. Now if you would excuse me, I have to get up early tomorrow. There are mysteries to be solved."  
It had been a strange dream indeed, but there wasn't any doubt in Luna's mind that it had been true. Prophetic dreams were often the strangest, after all. So she set out to investigate, first thing in the morning. After all, if Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres thought it was important, there were no two ways about it.

Luna woke up, her memories of dreaming a vague, blurry thing. By the time she was fully awake, only a vague impression of complexity remained. A dream within a dream, maybe. She shook her head and forgot about it. 


	5. Delirium

Charms Homework - Luna Lovegood, first year Ravenclaw

On Precision of Enunciation and its Importance to Spellcasting

Beginning with the most simple of first-year spells, like the ubiquitous Hovering Charm, wizards are taught to mind the emphasis and intonation of any incantation. Imprecise or altogether different styles of enunciation result in failing, weak or even completely different spells. Yet, accents and speech impediments do not bar wizards from casting altogether; though their incantations may sound almost completely different, a Scot and a Frenchman will still be able to cast the same spells. Even more interesting is that volume, pitch and speed of an incantation do not seem to matter.  
This is an unexpected and counter-intuitive result in that magic requires absolute precision in some aspects, yet is able to generalize over many different sequences of sounds, recognizing all of them as the same spell, taking, for example, the caster's background into account. This kind of sophistication in understanding commands is, aside from magic, only found in living beings, which raises an obvious hypothesis.  
If magic is not a law of nature in the ordinary, inanimate way, but rather a quasibiological entity in its own right, it follows that it would take one of two forms: First, that of a single entity, second, a conglomeration of several entities.  
In the first case, an entity capable of the numerous effects magic produces and with the capacity for reaction to attempts of casting around the world would necessarily be absurdly complex. While this isn't automatically impossible, it does seem unlikely; an entity of that complexity shouldn't be as static and predictable as magic is generally assumed to be, though that predictability has been marred by notable exceptions in the past.  
For that reason, magic is more likely to be the product of multiple entities working in contact. In that case, complexity of any single entity is not required for complex emergent behaviour, just as the patterns that form in observable ecosystems can be far more complex than the actions of a single animal. Of course, this approach still harbors infinite possibilities; since those entities could conceivably conform to taxonomies far stranger than any previously known, or even no classical taxonomy at all. Even dismissing that issue, there are infinite possibilities in anatomy, habits, social organization - an entirely new biological universe.  
Further musings on the topic would suffice to pin those possibilities down, but since this essay has already reached the assigned length, I shall remain silent on any deeper mysteries I uncover.

-~O~-

To: Luna Lovegood  
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry  
Hogsmeade, Scotland.

Dear Moonbeam,

Sorry for sending you three letters in your first three weeks at Hogwarts. I must seem overbearing.

I'm just wondering if there's any new companions in your life. Compared to our quiet home, Hogwarts must be bursting with activity. Hundreds of children, all in one castle.

My life has become somewhat more lonely without you, but at least my work continues to be fulfilling. Great discoveries are on the horizon, I'm sure. I've received some truly promising hints about Humdingers. There might be non-blibbering kinds; could you have imagined? I shouldn't spoil your anticipation, since you'll be able to read all about it in the next issue of the Quibbler.

This is a bit of a short letter, for lack of content, I'm afraid. Write back soon, tell me all about your experiences at Hogwarts, and we'll be able to converse at length.

Love,  
Daddy.

-~O~-

On the Headmasters' desk, a small silver device ejected a burst of steam, tipping it over the edge. Even as it fell, improbably many tiny silver legs unfolded, until it looked like a madman's vision of a spider. With a large claw, it began to scratch symbols into the floor.  
Dumbledore, woken from his midday nap, noticed just in time to take notes before the self-repairing enchantments on the floor erased the scratches. The writings were a jumble of ancient symbols and antiquated language which gave even the Headmaster pause.  
The best he could do, as far as a quick translation went, was, however, already worrying enough.  
what follows is, as much I could ken  
translation of the ancient words  
an earlier device would use  
take heed, and warning  
this missive I direct at thee  
speaks of calamity and trouble  
SMALL FIGMENTS OF TEARS AND BLOOD DRIP UPWARDS FROM THE GROUND ONTO ALL THE VAULTS OF HEAVEN BREAK  
WOE IS A FORGOTTEN PEOPLE BREAK  
LOST IN PLANES OF ECHO BREAK  
BOUND IN CHAINS OF GOLD BREAK  
NOTHING IS AS IT WAS BREAK  
THREADBARE FABRIC WILLS TWISTS INTO ITSELF BREAK  
AND INCURSION REMEMBERS  
Dumbledore studied it with a frown on his face. It seemed serious and strange enough that he shouldn't trouble Professor Babbling with it. Any further insights she might have wouldn't outweigh the risks of potentially sensitive or even dangerous information spreading to other minds.  
This was a mystery worthy of an ancient wizard. He, himself, would have to investigate.

-~O~-

To: Xenophilius Lovegood  
Ottery St. Catchpole

Hey Daddy,

the contrast between the Hogwarts of my dreams and the one I'm stuck living in is disheartening, sometimes. After all the talk and all the stories, I had expected a colourful and exiting castle, where every day is different. I've been here for four weeks, and there haven't been any surprises. There are no unexplainable petrifications, no job offers in the middle of the night, and I haven't sighted any hints of unknown creatures at all, even though Hogwarts is supposed to be the biggest nexus of magical energies in Scotland. In that sense, Ottery St. Catchpole had been more interesting.

I still remember some of the more inciting letters to the editor the Quibbler has printed about education at Hogwarts, and I fear their authors might have missed the point. There are no conspirators plotting to keep students ignorant, classes are just boring in all the regular ways. I'm pretty sure on this, having mentioned nargles and a few other creatures. The teachers reacted as one might expect of the uninitiated, with the telltale signs of incredulity followed by stalwart ignorance. The only one reacting differently at all was Professor Snape. At my first mention of one of the more obscure creatures, he deducted points from Ravenclaw. Those who link him with the Rotfang Conspiracy might actually be onto something; I trust you'll investigate further.

I don't even know what I had expected. An opportunity to open the narrow worldview of my classmates, maybe, or a chance to stumble upon some deeper mysteries. There'll still be time for that later in the year, I suppose, but my first impression just hasn't been promising.

Mom would tell me to raise my head and look to the future with a smile, and I'll do that. After all, I won't find anything interesting if I don't expect it.

Don't worry about me, I'll be fine.

Love,  
Luna

-~O~-

SNAPE entangled in CONSPIRACY  
Severus Snape, whose teaching methods had long been lamented by his students, has arguably reached new lows. With the beginning of the new school year, the flow of information in his lessons has, according to a trusted source, been reduced to a mere dripping. What could, however, cause such an aversion to teaching in a teacher?  
As usual, the editors of the Quibbler have, with the help of our valued experts, distilled the murky depths of speculation and rumour to extract a drop of that elusive crystal-clear fluid: Truth. In fact, Snape's behaviour seems obvious, if not reasonable, if one considers that his true allegiance doesn't belong to Hogwarts or Dumbledore, but rather the Rotfang Conspiracy and its various Shadowy Masterminds (for a full list, turn to page four).  
After all, who profits the most from the low potions qualifications of Hogwarts students? Those whose livelihoods depend on wizards being unable to cure themselves, most heinously those villains who would spread tooth disease to further their own power.  
Aberforth Dumbledore, famously not the Headmaster of Hogwarts, made a statement for the Quibbler's reporters:  
"Look, I don't know what my brother's doing, and I don't know what's going on in that school. [...] So I'd prefer if you could just let me live my life in peace, thank you very much."  
Wise words! Unquestionably, the students of Hogwarts want to live their lives in peace as well.  
For further news on the intricacies of politics, turn to page five to read a heart-breaking interview with an escapee of Fudge's goblin breeding farms.


	6. Youth

Luna sat on the countertop, her mom cooking beside her. Her legs were swinging over the edge and she was chatting away as though she couldn't contain her exuberance.  
"- and then me and Ginny went to the river. I was trying to show her how to catch Plimplys, like Dad showed me when I was littler, but she didn't get the hang of it. We had tons of fun, though!"  
Pandora smiled. "That's nice, darling."  
"How was your day? What are you cooking?"  
"Don't be so quick, Luna. Asking too many questions at once leads to hurried and incomplete answers." With a twitch of her wand, a jar of pickles unscrewed itself, its contents arranging themselves on a cutting board. "So, which one is going to be first?"  
"Your day! What did you do?"  
"Always so curious. Well, I did some more work on the spell I'm trying to develop right now. Do you still remember what it was about?"  
Luna thought for a second, face screwed in concentration. Then she got it. "You want to cast spells that cast themselves!"  
Pandora chuckled. "Almost. I'm trying to cast spells that cast other spells, not themselves. The difference is vital. Have you understood why?"  
Luna nodded, though she hadn't really understood. Mom's lectures where long and boring, most of the time. The other question was still on her mind, though. "Now tell me what you're cooking!"  
Her mother smiled a sad little smile. "Luna, you could be so brilliant if you'd just learn to have a little more patience. Think longer about things and you'll really understand them. But I guess if you have food on your mind, it can be hard to think about spellwork. So!" She made a large, sweeping gesture that encompassed the countertop, with its three cutting boards, five small bowls of chopped vegetables and the small loaf of bread and reached to the stove, where water was already bubbling vigorously in a large pot. "Today marks the day of gurdyroot experiment number seventeen! I've pickled them for three years, starting this morning, thanks to a special little ageing charm. I'm going to be putting the pickles in some different salads and make a paste out of them, which we'll put on this bread as well as eat with rice, just to see what fits best. What do you say to that?"  
Luna giggled. "I like your experiments. There's always so much different stuff! But dad has probably had enough of the gurdyroots by now."  
At this, Pandora laughed. "You're right, Luna, your dad is a picky eater. He's hated almost every new ingredient I've put on our table, but in the end, I always manage to find a recipe he likes. And I don't think he wants me to stop just because the first sixteen experiments failed. After all, he's got to know by now that I don't mind a challenge."  
"Well, if you say so. I don't know what's going on in his head."  
Pandora let the cookware rest for a second and took Luna by the shoulders. "You've got to cut your dad some slack. Running a newspaper is harsh work, especially since he prints exactly what he wants to print. On a bad day, he's overworked, and even on a good day, he's tired. I know he seems a bit distant sometimes, but he loves you, Luna. Don't let it get you down, okay?"  
Luna looked away, but answered obediently. "Yes, mom."  
"Good girl", she said, gave a wide smile and mussed up Luna's hair.  
"Mom! You know I hate that!"  
"And you know I'm already restricting myself by not doing it every single second. You've got to let me have fun sometimes. Now, who wants to try a Gurdyroot cookie?"

Dinner was unremarkable. Like every day, Pandora put up a lavishly complex and completely original meal, which Luna had great fun with, while Xenophilius barely ate anything, his face buried in some proofs for his newspaper.  
It would have taken a far more perceptive child than Luna to notice what Pandora hid behind her unwavering smile, and it was just as well that she didn't know. By not noticing how much her mother felt that she had failed in her duties every time her husband ignored her cooking, how often she felt that her housework was unappreciated, Luna kept herself happy. She never questioned just why Pandora created such extraordinary and eye-catching food at the expense of common sense as far as ingredients went, and she never thought about the spell research Pandora did in every available minute, which ate the few hours of rest and recreation she could have gotten every day.  
Luna knew that her mother was extraordinary, but she accepted it as a fact of life. She never once asked herself how her mother had become who she was, or why.  
In her later periods of introspection she would think about that, but by then, it would be far too late to do anything about it. She'd ask herself where she had gotten all the pieces to puzzle it out after the fact. Had she noticed her mother's smile fading when she thought nobody was watching? Had she maybe even seen her crying, seen her break down, repressing the memory afterwards? Maybe she had known all along and just chosen not to believe it.  
After dinner, the day wound down like a tired clock. The sounds Xenophilius made while putting in some after-dinner work hours became quieter and less frequent. Pandora had, after washing the dishes, retreated into her study, where the only sounds she made were the scratching of quill on paper and, less frequently, the sizzling of sparks, when experiments were necessary. Even Luna lost some of the frantic energy of youth to exhaustion, and when her mother came to tuck her in, she was already half asleep.

That night, Luna had the nightmare for the first time. It started with her safe in her home, just playing, when she heard an insistent and ugly scratching sound. Her first thought was that a stray cat or a humdinger had gotten into the house, so she went to investigate. Following the sounds, however, led her nowhere.  
She tried approaching from the kitchen, but the stove was in the way, and there was nothing in the oven. So she went through several doors, once around the ground floor of her tower-house, until she had found the sounds again in the living room. Now they were behind a couch, and Luna pulled it forward just enough to crawl behind. It took all of her strength.  
When she realized that there was nothing behind the couch, either, fear began to rise in her. The sounds had to be coming from the wall, so it couldn't be a cat. Could there be rats in the walls? She darted out from behind the couch, getting as far away from the walls as possible.  
The sound was getting louder, as though it was reacting to her fear. It conjured images of rats as big as Luna herself, with claws as long as her fingers. The claws were of yellow horn, shattered and dirty, and they were scratching at the inside of the walls. They were trapped there without light, but not for long; with every scrape, small chips of stone broke off the walls, and soon they would have made a hole. With the first fracture in the wall, it would only take them seconds more to pull apart the wall, breaking through, a mass of rotting fur and yellow teeth, tearing into Luna's flesh -  
She felt the wall at her back. The fear had made her edge so far back that she was now standing at the opposite end of the room. Her heart beat even faster, leaping up into her throat. She had to escape, but she couldn't find the door, there was no door anymore, and the scratching was getting louder and louder until there was a loud  
\- crack -  
and a single branching line appeared across the paint in the wall. For a startled second, there was complete silence, then the center point of the line bulged outward as claws emerged, forcing the wallpaper apart. But they weren't yellow, and they weren't dirty, they were iridescent, as though made of pearl with all the colours of the rainbow playing across them, and then some.  
Now Luna's heart really threatened to burst. She had dreaded the rats, but she had expected them, and whatever this was, it was wholly unexpected and therefore even more terrifying.  
The crack opened, and liquid darkness poured out. Luna could see only snatches of the thing inside, details that screamed of wrongness. Flesh slithered against rasping bone, five-pointed lips undulated and the only thing Luna could see clearly where those glowing claws, with colours that had tipped over so far into the realm of insanity that Luna's eyes pleaded for mercy.  
It came for her with a slow, languid motion, folding space underneath it to accelerate, simultaneously stretching out time like honey until Luna's next heartbeat seemed impossibly far away, yet the claws were so close -  
and she woke up. Her mother was already there, talking fast. Luna realized she was screaming and stopped, but her raging heart was not so easy to control. Cold sweat stood out on her skin.  
It took some minutes until she had calmed down enough to tell her mother that she was okay and would be able to sleep again, alone, thank you very much, she wasn't a small child anymore.  
After she had sent her mother away, the shadows of the moonlight flooding her room seemed darker, somehow. She clutched the covers tightly, trying to find solace in their warmth and familiarity.  
She knew that the thing from her dream couldn't exist, even less so than giant rats in the walls. Yet, her scared mind reasoned, she had seen it in her dream, though she had never thought of it before. She tried to stop the train of thought, but it ran away from her. If it was in her dream without her having seen anything like it in the real world, it wasn't a cheap copy. It must have come from somewhere. Since it had somehow arrived in her dream, how could she know that it couldn't exit from there again, peeling away the wallpaper from the wall in front of her, emerging to eat her, this time for real? Or - and this thought was even worse, somehow - since it came from her head, shouldn't it peel away the skin from her forehead, bursting from her skull?  
Luna felt at her forehead. It was wet with sweat, but there weren't any tears or bulges forming. The realization of how silly her thoughts were hit her, but the fear didn't go away.  
It took a long time for Luna to go to sleep again.  
For a few days, that dream became her nightly companion.

Finally, Luna had figured it out. She gathered together all her courage and knocked on the door to her mom's study. Pandora didn't like being interrupted,  
"Mom, you shouldn't do it. It's not the right time to experiment."  
Pandora put a hand on Luna's head and crouched down to face her. "Why, Luna?"  
"I just... I just know! Please trust me!" Desperation had crept into Luna's voice.  
Her mom just sighed. "I trust you, but you have to be more specific. What's going to happen if I go through with the experiment, and why?"  
"I don't know exactly, but it'll be bad. I think you've made a mistake, or will make one. It's just a small thing, but combined with something you didn't even expect, it'll have terrible consequences."  
"Luna, dear, that's not exactly what I meant by specific. Can't you describe the terrible fate you've seen in store for me?"  
Luna took a long breath and tried to calm down. She didn't try to concentrate often, but this was an emergency. Finally, she found the right phrase to use. "The waves a sinking stone makes fill the entire pond. It's like this, but with magic."  
Pandora tilted her head. "What's the pond in this metaphor? And where does danger come into it? Can't you explain everything a little more clearly?"  
Luna had been scared of this question. "I can't - Mom, you would have to find out for yourself."  
"Why?"  
How could she explain this? She had sat down and thought today, really thought for the first time in her life and come to a set of answers, of deep fears which shouldn't be communicated since the thing from her dreams might hear her. Somehow, she knew that, no matter how terrible everything seemed right now, it would be far worse if it heard. She suspected that she shouldn't even be giving out hints about this, but this matter was too important to do nothing. Her mother was going to get hurt.  
In absence of any real plan, she decided to try her trump card. "Mom, can't you see how scared I am? Shouldn't that be enough?"  
Pandora's face grew soft at that, and she mussed Luna's hair up with real concern. "I see it, and I really want to do something about it. But this experiment's going to be really safe, I'll just be making lights. Would you want to watch?"  
In truth, there was nothing in the world that Luna wanted to do less right now, but maybe, she would be able to do something to let her mom survive this. She bit on her lower lip and gathered her courage.  
"I'll watch."  
Pandora grinned. From her perspective, the problem must have seemed almost solved now: Luna would watch the experiment and nothing bad would happen. There would be no more fear afterwards. If she only knew, if Luna could only tell her.  
Pandora gripped her wand lightly, and Luna's heart begin beating in earnest. Fear held her to the spot now, as solid as it had been in the dream. Silence stretched out the seconds. There were miles between Pandora's reassuring smile and Luna's worst fears, and she suddenly knew that this would be the last time she saw her mother's smile, no matter what she did now.  
A single claw scraped across the inside of a wall. The rasping sound was ponderously slow, stretching across dozens of Luna's rapid heartbeats. Her mother heard it as well - one of her eyebrows quirked upwards, but she must have thought it to have been a creak in one of the many wooden beams holding the house together.  
She swished her wand, cutting the empty space with a figure eight. There was no incantantion - there never was, for a newly developed spell, but the exact point of casting was obvious nonetheless. The tip of Pandora's wand touched the spot where it had begun, and she faltered, her knees buckling under her, her face suddenly grey.  
"What -"  
She cut herself off when she saw what she had brought into being. Instead of the harmless floating light she had expected, casting Lumos indirectly, there was a ripple in the air, like heat shimmering in the middle of summer. In waves, it propagated outwards, until it filled the entire room and Pandora's hands seemed distorted before her eyes. Something had gone terribly wrong, and the Finite was on her lips before she had thought about it, but she somehow couldn't dispel this. Her mind raced through possible hypotheses. She had cast the spell indirectly, so she might not get recognized as the caster, and then it could be too powerful to get dispelled. Or maybe she wasn't even seeing the spell itself right now, and its secondary effects were immune to a Finite. Maybe the problem was even -  
But at that point she had to cut herself off again, since the centre of the distortion had just blossomed into a spot of pure, abstract black which bled into the air like ink in water. From the centre emerged a single iridescent claw and a thing pulled itself through the hole, the like of which she had never seen. She heard Luna scream and determination filled her. Whatever that thing was, it was not going to get her daughter.  
She readied a barrage of spells inside her mind and began casting, her wand stabbing and slashing, bolts and blades and chains of light flying through the air. It was harder than normal, and she could feel the spells dying in the distortion that still filled the room. By the time they had reached the darkness around the thing, they were dim and weak, disappearing on contact. She realized that this was a foe she could not face. With a single slash of her wand she brought down the anti-apparition jinx around her home, using a backdoor she had installed on a particularly paranoid day. She tried to grab Luna's arm, but suddenly, the room was immense and Luna was impossibly far away. Behind her, she could feel space folding. So much had happened in this single second that the feeling of the claw in her back, while novel, didn't even register. She tried to disapparate, tried to think of more powerful, more destructive curses, but she could feel her magic dying.

Luna was different after that day. No one, not even her father, could get more than a few words out of her about what happened. As it was obvious that she was traumatised, no one dug too deep. They hoped that she would learn to deal with what had happened on her own, and that she would talk when she was one day ready.  
The Auror Office launched an investigation, but stopped it after it became obvious that a spellcrafting incident had occurred. After all, there were no known curses which could have twisted Pandora Lovegood's body until it fit into the volume of a golf ball. Her remains were shipped to the department of mysteries, along with her research notes, which the Aurors had sealed into a seamless sphere of titanium on scene.  
At the department of mysteries, an Unspeakable opened the sphere and read the notes, to determine that none of the cited references needed to be pulled out of circulation. Though many of Pandora's ideas were groundbreaking, the Unspeakable wasn't curious or interested in them, since that would have been against protocol. Instead, he consigned them to a flickering blue flame which had been burning beneath the Ministry far longer than he had been alive. Protocol was satisfied, and Pandora Lovegood's work soon forgotten.


	7. Laws

"So, Miss Lovegood. Word has reached me that you have been implicated in a most unfortunate incident." Professor McGonagall's crisp Scottish accent harbored tones of reproach. "Some of my students told me that you had hexed them in the corridors."  
Luna kept her face expressionless. That came easy to her, since it was emoting that really required work.  
"Miss Lovegood," Professor McGonagall's voice had changed, though Luna couldn't really concentrate on deciphering the emotion behind it. "You have to talk to me. If I don't get your side of the story, it can only end up worse for you."  
Luna still didn't answer. To pass the time, she began to study McGonagall's face. The witch seemed older today, somehow. The lines in her face had gotten deeper, and her eyebrows were drawn together in a way that emphasized them further. Just then, one of her eyebrows twitched in a most interesting way that reminded Luna of something, but she just didn't know what.  
McGonagall spoke again. "I try to go above and beyond my duties in teaching here. I try to notice what my students do, when they're in my class, what they're talking about and who they're talking to. Once I know them better, I can teach better, or at least, that's what I hope. I've noticed that you don't talk to anyone, Luna. They're all ignoring you, barely two weeks into the school year. Once you all get older, there will be a phase when they grow bored of ignoring you. Bullying is a terrible thing."  
Luna cocked her head. "Is it, really?"  
McGonagall was speechless for a second. "Are you implying that you don't think so?"  
"Oh, no. If I thought that, I would have said so. Rather, I wanted to ask, since you seemed so certain. Have you ever been bullied?" Luna's voice was still conversational, neither apprehensive nor taunting. Nonetheless, McGonagall's eyebrows drew together in what Luna had learned to recognize as an indignant glare.  
"Young lady, I don't like your attitude, and it would be wise not to talk that way to a teacher!"  
Luna frowned. She remembered those words from somewhere, but where had it been?  
When she didn't answer, McGonagall went on. "I expect courtesy and obedience from any student, and from you, I expect an apology right now."  
"I'm sorry," Luna said, with some relief. It was always nice when people communicated their expectations clearly. "I should have shown courtesy and obedience."  
Though Luna hadn't thought it possible, Professor McGonagall's eyebrows narrowed even further. Then, she sighed.  
"I suppose that is good enough, for now. Let us get back to the matter at hand. What, exactly, happened in the corridors this afternoon?"  
Luna almost smiled. Another clear question that she could easily answer. Professor McGonagall might become her favourite teacher at this rate. "Oh, classes had already finished, so I was wandering around -"  
"Just wandering around?"  
An interruption. Professor McGonagall should care more about her possible status as Luna's favourite teacher, Luna thought. "Yes, I was taking a walk, it helps me think," she said with great dignity. "That day, my thinking began with what we had learned in potions class the day before. Professor Snape had told us about the uses of animals' brains in Potions, and I had asked if it was possible to substitute Aquavirius Maggots, since they look so similar. He had seemed somewhat taken aback and deducted five points from Ravenclaw, which was an unexpected reaction and therefore ripe in potential epiphanies. See, if he had known the answer, he could have just told me. I suppose he might not have been willing to admit ignorance, but -"  
"I am sorry," Professor McGonagall interrupted again, "but is this going anywhere?"  
Now, Luna was becoming slightly indignant herself. "Well I don't know! I didn't manage to finish that train of thought yet, and you shouldn't count your Crumple-Horned Snorkacks before you've found them. And with the way this day's been going, I won't get to make a theory out of this hypothesis today."  
"No, I meant if you thought it was relevant to the situation. The topic at hand."   
When Luna didn't change her dazed expression, Professor McGonagall sighed again. Luna was getting the hang of this one, as well. Most of the time it was exasperation, though sometimes it happened when Professor McGonagall was really surprised at the incompetency of a kid in class, and sometimes when she wasn't surprised at all, by her own admission. Maybe there were some slight differences between those versions of the sigh, and if she trained enough, she could even distinguish between them, and know if Professor McGonagall was surprised or not before she said it. That might be really useful.  
"Miss Lovegood, are you even listening to me?"  
"Now I am."  
Professor McGonagall sighed again, and this time it was probably the unsurprised one. "I will make this short and clear, then, for the sake of my sanity. Do you remember coming upon Derrick Boyle and Timothy Harris in the corridors today?"  
"Yes, I bumped into one of them just when I had been so close to a proof for Professor Snape's implication in the Rotfang conspiracy."  
"Thank you, Miss Lovegood, but could you please leave out any details about what was going on in your head? Now," she continued, without leaving Luna an opportunity to answer, "did you cast a hex on any of them?"  
"No, I didn't."  
Professor McGonagall raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure? They report seeing something rather strange and frightening which you were using to threaten them."  
"Well, I can't really talk about whether I'm sure or not if I'm not allowed to talk about what's going on in my head, aren't I? Actually, I couldn't even talk about what happened, since I would really be only talking about my perceptions of -" Luna abruptly fell silent as she realised the implications. If she couldn't talk about anything in her head, she really shouldn't vocalize her thoughts, which meant not talking at all.  
Professor McGonagall looked puzzled for a moment, which was an expression Luna always liked, since it reflected how she felt in most conversations. Then, a flicker of understanding lit up her features. Luna liked that one as well, though more on principle than anything, since she could never adequately share other people's epiphanies.  
"Miss Lovegood, you can talk about things in your head, but please try to keep your answers reasonably short. Now, let's try again. If you didn't cast a hex, how would you explain what Mr. Boyle and Mr. Harris saw?"  
"I don't know. It might have been a distortion in the air, or someone else's spell, or a trick of the light. Maybe swamp gas."  
"Swamp gas? I didn't know that we had a swamp in any of the corridors."  
Luna wanted to tell her that there would be one, some day, but she didn't think she should.  
"Nevermind, this clearly isn't working." Professor McGonagall folded her hands together and closed her eyes. After a minute, she spoke again. "I will give you one last chance, Miss Lovegood. Tell me what happened between you, Derrick Boyle and Timothy Harris today, while leaving out any facts, theories or hypotheses which aren't directly relevant to the aforementioned events."  
Luna thought about it for a second, then she told her story. It wasn't such a big deal, anyway. She had bumped into the other two first-years, and they had had a problem with that, which had somehow escalated into them pushing her around until they had turned around and ran away. She didn't tell anything about the scratching noises she had heard, or that she had heard them before. She also didn't mention anything at all about her mother, since that didn't seem directly relevant.   
When she had finished, Professor McGonagall nodded once, and sent her off to dinner. Luna was happy enough with the course of the conversation; she had learned interesting things about the conversational signals Professor McGonagall used, and she was pretty sure that Professor McGonagall wasn't part of the Rotfang Conspiracy, since she had reacted to her theories with the telltale indifference of the uninitiated. When Luna took the steps down to the great hall, she was humming happily.

Minerva McGonagall sat at her desk, more than ready for the day to end. If someone had asked her which students caused the most trouble, she wouldn't have said Gryffindors, or even Slytherins. No, it was Ravenclaws. They were so convinced of their own cleverness that a week didn't pass without a Ravenclaw thinking he had found a loophole in the school rules, or contradicting her in class because he had theories about transfiguration.  
And that was the amount of frustration they caused when they were just insufferably smart-alecky. Once or twice a decade, however, some Ravenclaw turned up who was just too odd for the normal rules to apply to them. It was always a hassle trying to work with them, since no amount of punishment or reward could discipline them; they just stayed as they were.  
Luna Lovegood, however, was extraordinary even among those students. In fact, she was extraordinary enough that it might be prudent to check...  
Minerva McGonagall coughed. "Albus?" For a moment she hoped that the name would just echo around her empty office, but then, a candle began to swell, growing in length and width until it resolved into the wisest and least dignified wizard alive. Albus hopped down from the candlestick and dusted off his robes.   
"Why, my transfiguration skills must be growing rusty if you could detect me."  
Minerva sighed, and Luna would have recognized it as the unsurprised sort. "I just assumed that a first-year that peculiar would stimulate your interest. I was right, it seems."  
"Yes, yes indeed! Most capable, Minerva. So, what do you think about the Lovegood girl?"  
"She hasn't hexed Boyle and Harris, that much is clear. She must have done something else, though, if they really were pushing her around, they weren't likely to just stop. Also, they were scared witless when they came to me. It's clear that they have seen something."  
Albus smiled. "Ah, I'm not interested in the scuffle in the corridor. What did do you think of the girl herself?"  
"She certainly is unique. I had to use a level of semantic precision I usually reserve for Ravenclaws of year three and above, but her methods of evasion were unlike those of her housemates." She hesitated, then spoke a bit softer. "I had heard of her mother's death, but with that sort of trauma, I had expected someone sullen and moody, or even a completely withdrawn girl, not this sort of ... quirkyness."  
"Exactly, Minerva! Luna is most interesting. She could be the most talented natural Occlumens in the history of wizardkind. Mind you, it wasn't hard to get into her mind at all, but I was hopelessly lost the entire time I was in there. A fascinating maze, filled with all manners of curios and distractions, which is only fitting for someone so curious and easily distracted."  
Minerva sat bolt upright, and her voice was quiet and measured. "Are you serious, Albus? You violated a traumatized child's mental privacy over a scuffle between students?"  
Albus turned toward her, and shook his head gravely. "Do you really believe me to be so frivolous? I know that a mind should not be breached at a moment's notice. The situation was truly dangerous, however, and I needed to find out what I could."  
Minerva frowned. "You know I trust you, Albus," though it was hard, sometimes. "What happened today that was truly dangerous?"  
"If Luna didn't cast a spell, what exactly happened in that corridor? Derrick and Timothy have never been susceptible to hallucinations. It can't have been accidental magic, since it's almost unheard of in the halls of Hogwarts. There's two options: The first is that some other entity cast an illusion, most likely another student who was sympathetic to the plight of an ostracized first-year girl. If we consider the nature of the image that was conjured, that other student must have had access to the very wrong kind of books." Albus shot Minerva a significant glance, which she completely failed to understand.  
"The dark arts? What Boyle and Harris described sounded like the ravings of a madman!"  
"And if there's one thing worse than a dark wizard, it's a thoroughly insane one, or at least that's what everyone tells me. Yet the second option is far worse. If the thing in that corridor wasn't an illusion, it was real."  
Minerva wasn't always sure if Albus was serious or joking. In some cases, she hadn't known until years later. This time, however, the joke was too bad to be anything else. "Be serious, Albus."  
"Oh, I am entirely serious. There are still magical beasts we don't know anything of, and you know Xenophilius' taste for the unusual. What if he has acquired something truly strange, and it has followed his daughter to school?"  
"The wards should have - "  
"The wards are a thousand years old, and all that talk of 'magics most ancient' barely serves to distract from the fact that they are horribly outdated. If a creature we don't know anything about is loose in Hogwarts, it falls to us to contain it, not to convince ourselves that it isn't there."  
"I agree." Minerva's voice hadn't been this calm and professional at any point of the evening. "What do we do?"  
"You should probably give Derrick and Timothy a stern warning for their behaviour towards Luna, and keep an eye out for her well-being. I'll take care of everything else." With that, Fawkes landed on Albus' shoulder, they both went up in flame and were gone from her office.  
Minerva allowed herself one last sigh for the evening. It couldn't be healthy for her to be sighing this much.


	8. Remorse

At first, Luna had been all too content to write the two boys' behaviour off as something she just wouldn't ever understand, but halfway through dinner, she changed her mind. That kind of attitude was just wrong, no matter what it was about. Curiosity was to be sated, and giving up just because you didn't understand yet was the height of weakness.  
Back in the common room, she sat cross-legged on her bed. It was the posture in which she always fought her most complicated mental battles; not because of any inherent geometrimystical properties of crossed legs, but simply out of habit. Now that she thought about it, though, maybe crossed legs had geometrimystical properties. It would go a long way towards explaining why she had won so many of those complicated mental battles. She started on a few mental sketches of geometrical classifications of different postures containing crossed legs, until she noticed that she was distracting herself and decided to put it off. She would think about it first thing next morning, she decided. After all, if she didn't, it would distract her every time she crossed her legs, which was, after all, when she had to fight her most complicated mental battles.  
She closed her eyes, breathed deeply and tried to slow her pulse. Finally, she felt she was ready, and pulled up her memories on what happened in that corridor. She remembered not looking where she was going, when she had walked into one of the boys, just a bump with her shoulder. He'd said "Hey!", and as he'd looked at her, there had been a moment of realization on his face. Okay, that was something to work with.  
He had realized something right as he looked at her, had had some kind of idea.  
Luna was at a loss for how to find out what kind of idea he had had. There was an almost infinite scope of possibilities there.  
How could she know what kind of idea someone else had gotten? Well, how did she know when she had an idea herself?  
When she had an idea herself, she would know more after the idea than before, and usually think about something different, which would, most likely change her actions as well. Luna smiled an inward smile. It didn't show on her face, but it felt warm and fuzzy anyway. She deserved it because she had figured out something by assuming other people thought like she did, and yet it felt right. This was a rare thing to happen, and when it did, it reinforced her feeling of companionship to humans in general in a most pleasing way.  
Now, before the idea the boy had said "Hey", and afterwards he had complained about for a long time about how Luna had hurt him by walking into him. This was somewhat confusing, since Luna really wouldn't expect to hurt anyone by walking into them. So the boy was either exceedingly fragile, or he had been lying.  
Lying had always been a rather difficult topic for Luna to wrap her head around. For her, there weren't many intermediate steps between thinking and saying something, and the thought of thinking about what you were saying beforehand to create untruths was just weird. In this case, though, it seemed the more likely hypothesis.  
So the boy had been lying when he had complained. Why? He had expected to gain something from it, but you couldn't gain a lot by speaking. Basically, you could only influence people. And since Luna was the person he had been talking to, he must have been trying to influence her.  
What had he been trying to get her to do? He'd asked for an apology shortly after talking to her, but he hadn't been content with it, anyway, so that couldn't have been it. After that, both of the boys had pushed her around while calling her names, behaviour Luna still found more than puzzling.  
She wasn't getting anywhere with this, and she was getting upset thinking about it. In fact she had half a mind to just stop this whole train of thought now. She might have even done it, if the other half of her mind hadn't remembered her mother's words in that exact moment. "Think longer about thinks and you'll understand them."  
And her mother had been right. If Luna hadn't started to think longer about things, she never would have found out about so many things. Basic, boring facts that she had badly needed, at first, like how to cook, clean and do the other housework which her mother had used to do. Then, as she invested more time, she had arrived at such wonderful things as the anatomy of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, which was truly improbable and her pride and joy. Once, she had even understood a deep secret, namely, why her father always looked so disheveled since her mother was gone.  
She was frustrated, and she was angry at herself, and she might even be a little sad, but there was a way out of these bad feelings, and it went through understanding. So she began to think again, and this time, by some instinct, she started in the middle. The boys had pushed her around and called her names. Luna was always bad at remembering faces, so she didn't know what sort of expressions they had worn while doing that, but she was good at remembering sounds, and she remembered laughter in the air. Since she clearly hadn't been happy, it must have been the boys. If they had been happy, what they had been doing had probably been their purpose from the beginning.  
Now, pieces of the puzzle fell in place. Luna still didn't understand the first thing about the things the boys had said before that, or why the one she had walked into had pretended to be hurt, but she knew what it was called when people found enjoyment in pushing others around and calling them names. It was bullying. She had been bullied.  
With that word, she understood so much at once that she barely had time to notice it all. She understood how she herself had felt, both directly after what had happened and when she had forced herself to think about it. She understood why the few people walking by at the time had pretended not to have seen anything, and she even understood why Professor McGonagall had talked about bullying while they had been in her office.  
The elation faded when she combined her realization with what she already knew. The boy she had walked into had recognized her and bullied her afterward. So he probably wouldn't have bullied anyone else. She remembered what Professor McGonagall had said: "They'll grow bored of ignoring you." So this was it, then? They had grown bored of ignoring her already and so she was a target now.  
Somehow, this made Luna intensely angry. She didn't think she had been that angry before, and she didn't even know what she was angry at. Part of her was angry at everything, part of her was angry at the bullies, but that wasn't the biggest part. The biggest part was angry at herself. She couldn't help shake the feeling that she was different, she knew she was different, and that was what had made them bully her. The complex dance of social interaction had never been something Luna had understood very well, and with the way she had just ignored all conventions, people had probably singled her out from the start. In other words, she had made missteps. She had tread on others' feet and ignored the rhythm entirely, and when she had finally literally walked into someone, that had been the step that broke the camel's fetlock.  
In simpler words, it was her fault.  
Oh, it wasn't entirely her fault, she wasn't that arrogant. A lot of the share of the blame lay on the two boys' shoulders, and a lot of others had enabled them. But Luna had been the one to take the first step outside of social convention, and when you did something different than a whole lot of people, there was always a chance you were just wrong.  
That thought broke her out of her misery. It was just so, so entirely unlike her. When she was different than others, she wasn't necessarily wrong. She didn't think many people thought as intensely about things as she did, and she was quite sure, at the risk of sounding arrogant, of being the world's foremost authority on Crumple-Horned Snorkacks as a result. Before she could assign any blame to herself, before she could even think about changing herself, she had to think about it longer.  
And in her haste, she had failed to consider something quite important. At the end, the boys had run away, and she knew now that this was out of the ordinary. They had been scared off, though Luna hadn't done anything. Therefore, there had been a third entity at work. Now, she supposed it could have been a teacher, but that seemed unlikely judging from Professor McGonagall's reaction. It could also have been a student, but she hadn't seen anyone do anything, and who was she even kidding?  
There could have only been one third entity, and it was the one that had blown up a Chocolate Frog on the train. There was one coherent explanation for all its actions: It had wanted to do her a favour.  
This, at last, reassured her, and a warm glow spread through her body.  
Without thinking, she spoke softly: "Thank you, friend."  
As she opened her eyes, she saw that the other Ravenclaw first-year girls had by now arrived in their dorm room and were, one and all, staring at her. She saw Lea's face twist in open disgust and knew that she had to say something to explain herself that would also seem brilliant and funny, but her mind was racing in circles and she just had no clue at all.  
Before she could think of anything, bright lights exploded behind her lids and she faded away.

She awoke in a hospital bed, and it was already morning. Looking around, she saw that it was too small to be St. Mungo's, and therefore had to be the Hogwarts hospital wing. She hadn't expected to make it into the hospital wing within the first five weeks.  
Something on a chair beside her bed stirred, and it took her a second to recognize Lea. She stared at the girl in open-mouthed surprise. Why was she at her hospital bed?  
Lea cleared her throat. "I'm only going to say this once, so you better listen up. When the other girls and I brought you in, Madame Pomfrey told me you had some kind of mental illness. I have no idea how much of your", she scoffed, "behaviour is really excused by that, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you promise to stop acting weird, I'll give you a second chance."  
Luna took a second to process that. Maybe she was still asleep, since she hadn't understood at all what Lea wanted to say. "A second chance at what?"  
Lea lifted her eyebrows as though the question was beneath her, but Luna, who had seen Professor McGonagall lift a single eyebrow, was not impressed and just waited until Lea spoke.  
"A second chance at being friends with me."  
Luna smiled an inward smile. She was pretty sure that she knew, now, what friends were. "I don't think it's really friendship if it comes with those kinds of strings attached."  
Lea scowled at first, then shrugged. "Suit yourself, Loony. See you tomorrow in class, then."

Luna had no idea what she should do with the rest of the day, now that she was sitting here alone in the hospital wing with an entire day of lying in bed before her. She could think about something, but she could do that at any time when she didn't have anything else to do, like in History of Magic. It took a few seconds of thinking about thinking until she had an idea. She had a friend now, so she could just as well contact it.  
Hey, she thought. Don't try to answer me on this, or I suppose I'll get knocked out again. I have an idea to circumvent that, but I guess you'd know. If you think it's a bad one, feel free to interrupt me with a seizure.  
Luna waited for a few seconds, since she had noticed that interval with the earlier incidents. After there was no seizure forthcoming, she snuck out of bed, treading lightly.  
Luckily, there was no one else in the hospital wing. Even Madame Pomfrey seemed to be away right now, and it was a short trip to the medicine cabinet. Of course, it was locked, since Madame Pomfrey was likely one of the most sensible persons in Hogwarts, but Luna knew just what she could do about that.  
She put two fingers on the lock and willed it to open. Five seconds later, it sprang open with a click. Luna giggled to herself. This was almost as though she could do magic.  
She looked over the bottles of potions and pills carefully, until she had found the one she wanted. She had no idea how she had known this was the one, but she was so used to correct conjectures just feeling right that she didn't even question it. She crushed three pills and took them with a glass of water. She knew, somehow, that this was a strong dose, but it would work just fine.  
She barely made it to her hospital bed before she collapsed. Her last thought before everything went dark was that she had left the medicine cabinet open, but she trusted her friend to take care of that.


	9. Structure

Falling asleep was usually a process so blurred that most of the time, Luna didn't even notice when she passed the border into her dreams. This time, the sensation was so abrupt and disorienting that the border might as well have been a wall of fire ten feet tall. She was falling, tumbling around in a manner not too different from Floo fire. Her eyes were open, and yet she couldn't see anything. What filled her vision was neither darkness nor blinding light, but something so nondescript that it evaded perception.   
It was a relief when she noticed a solid object: A golden oval, filled with a picture. She fell forwards, and through it.

-~O~-

Luna Lovegood had known that she was different from the beginning. From her tenth year onward, she had known a truth no one else did: There was something seriously wrong with the way magic worked. Luna had arrived at this conclusion solely through reason and observation, though without her mother's death, her eyes might never have been opened.  
After Pandora's death, the violent and completely unexpected outcome of an experiment that should have been harmless, Luna had sat down and thought. She had never been one for careful thinking, before, so she had needed some time to get used to the basics of concentration, extrapolation and verification, but once she had gotten there, the rest of the way was straight, if not narrow. In fact, it had been absolutely sprawling: The possibilities of explanation for what had happened were staggering. There was the possibility of a fatal mistake by Pandora, a rare statistical fluctuation in which a spell did something completely different, a magic-devouring monster or, even simpler, the possibility that Luna had simply gone mad and only imagined what she had seen.  
The last option was quickly eliminated by virtue of being useless. From the inside, Luna would never know if all she ever saw were hallucinations, and if she assumed so, no correct course of action ensued. After all, she would have no idea how to actually see the real world, and no idea of knowing truth if she ever saw it.  
Therefore, there was an external culprit.  
The careful weighing of evidence took her months, and her conclusion was only reached when her wand chose her, at Ollivander's. It had taken Ollivander a long time to find her match, with many wands rejecting her, until he had, finally, with a worried frown on his face, brought her another one.  
"10', Alder, core of dragon heartstring, rigid.", he had said. "I do not think, though..."  
He had been interrupted by the wand giving of a powerful shower of sparks in her hand.  
"Astonishing. I had judged you for the yielding type, yet this is the type of wand which chooses strong people. Do you have a goal to accomplish, one that might elude you for life?"  
Luna had not known before, but in that moment, it had become definite. "Yes. To find the nature of magic." And change it, though she hadn't spoken that out loud.  
Ollivander had raised his eyebrows and her father had chuckled. It was clear that they hadn't been taking her seriously, but it didn't matter. Luna had finally figured out what had happened to her mother.   
It had been so obvious, in retrospect: Her mother had died of casting a spell. It was clear where the fault lay, no matter the intermediary: Magic. Something, somehow, was wrong with magic, when a spell could kill the wizard who had cast it. Be it through a small mistake becoming deadly, fluctuations in the effects of spells or even a magic-devouring monster, all of those could be fixed easily once she had found out just what was at the root of every wizard's ability to cast spells, and found out a way to change it.  
With that realization, Diagon Alley made her uncomfortable. Magic was everywhere in this place, used for menial tasks and the tiniest of amusements. Now that she suspected any piece of magic might kill her, she didn't feel safe at all. Sadly, the trip to buy school robes and other supplies was far from over.  
When they had finally arrived back at their house, Luna was relieved. Most wizarding houses contained about the same density of magic as Diagon Alley did, but the Lovegoods where, as always, the exception that proves the rule. Since Pandora's death, Luna had been doing her fair share of the housework, and since she was still underage, she couldn't exactly use spells to clean dishes, wash clothes, or sweep floors. In addition, her father had never been very good at that kind of magic, and so the greatest need for spells was gone. As in most other households, when the work was done, the rest was leisure, and neither Xenophilius (who was still very busy with the Quibbler) nor Luna (who spent the most exciting hours of her life inside her head) had much need for magical distractions.  
As a result, Luna could breathe freely in their cluttered, sometimes messy home, without any fear for unexpected consequences.  
When she stood before the Hogwarts Express a week later, she felt an almost physical pain at the thought of boarding it. She didn't want to enter a world so dangerously magical that even when everything worked as intended, students got hurt every day. Hogwarts even needed an entire hospital wing -  
wasn't she there right now?

-~O~-

The thought pulled her out of the dream, and she stared at platform 9 3/4 through a golden oval framing it, which was floating in the middle of nothing. The picture in the oval still moved - the other Luna was boarding the train now, visibly fighting with herself.   
Luna shook her head. This expanse of nothing must be where she went between dreams. Maybe another golden frame would appear with another dream, when she was ready to have it. Why had she never remembered this, after waking up?  
Her curiosity spiked, and she looked around, though the nothing around her made her feel disoriented. When she had turned around completely, a different picture stood in the golden oval. There were no details in the picture, only blurry, wobbly shapes in various colours. Yet she could grasp its meaning.  
Welcome.  
Without even thinking, she answered. "Thank you."  
She blinked, and the picture changed, somehow, while its constituent dots remained the same. It was a landscape now, depicting the sky in all its possible states of being, from huge, foreboding storm clouds to patches of clear and sunny sky. After a second, she got it. The picture was making small talk by asking about the weather. It was so unexpected that Luna burst out laughing, and when she had wiped the tears out of her eyes, the picture had changed again.  
It was a sequence of objects now, each slightly different than the one before it, with the final one just being placed. Again, the question was somehow implicit in the composition, the choice of colours and the brushwork.  
Another?  
Luna nodded, and when she closed her eyes, she could feel herself being pulled into the frame again.

-~O~-

Muffled shouting could be heard from inside the locked classroom. Luna recognized Harry's voice, completely missed Ginny's significant glance, and would have walked right on by, had Ginny not opened the door.  
The first few sentences of the conversation didn't even register to Luna, until she noticed that Harry's tone was quite confrontational, and had to intervene.  
"You're being rather rude, you know." Truth was always best when friends were fighting.  
Luna ignored Harry's even ruder response.  
"Wait," that was Hermione, who could always be counted on to keep a cooler head than Harry. "Wait... Harry, they can help."  
A short argument between Harry and Hermione followed, which was mostly about someone called Sirius being tortured. Now, this was either someone she didn't know, or -  
"When you say 'Sirius', are you talking about Stubby Boardman?"  
As usual, everyone ignored her more important questions, but Luna was used to that. She had already decided, anyhow: Obviously You-Know-Who would torture Stubby Boardman, most likely to pressure him to finally release a new album. You-Know-Who must be a fan.  
"- otherwise I'm going to the Department of Mysteries right now." That was Harry again, still sounding quite rude. Why did no one ever listen to her implied advice?   
Then she thought about what he had actually said. "The Department of Mysteries?" This was a location neither You-Know-Who nor Stubby Boardman were known for frequenting. "But how are you going to get there?"  
Everyone ignored her, again. Then, they started making plans, which Luna was fine with. She had realized this was a priceless opportunity: She could walk into the Department of Mysteries on the heels of a perfectly reasonable - or at least sufficiently Gryffindor - attempt to rescue a celebrity in peril. The things she could see there...  
She followed Ginny out of the room, her head swimming with ideas for Quibbler articles based on her fantastical discoveries. She would finally be able to unveil so many truths, find evidence for the Ministry's darkest dealings. After all, where could Fudge's secret Goblin breeding farms be, if not inside the Department of Mysteries? There were also the Heliopaths, the Aquavirius Maggots, and if she got really lucky and found the Hall of Prophecy, she might even find some hint for the location of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack.  
Luna barely noticed that Ginny had started a commotion. Even when this much was happening around her - students running around, Ginny setting a distraction in motion, a daring rescue plan being implemented - her head was just so much more interesting than the outside world. She was running through everything she had ever heard of the Department of Mysteries and trying to compile a floor plan, or at least a reasonable list of the things they might encounter there. She didn't do this in the manner of one trying to account for possible dangers; rather, it was more like a kid planning a visit at an amusement park. There was so little time, after all, and so much to see, she had to be methodical.  
She found it quite rude when Goyle grabbed her, completely interrupting her thought process, and told him so. Of course, she got ignored once again.   
What was it with today? On most reasonable days, she could expect to get responses from people, even if they were, most of the time, curt and annoyingly narrow-minded. Today, however, she was getting ignored, cursed at, ignored again and even interrupted while trying to plan a visit to the Department of Mysteries.  
Realization and horror dawned slowly. It must be Wrackspurts! The damnable little pests had snuck up on her and her friends, inciting irritation and confusion. Harry must be the worst off. She remembered his conversations with Hermione, how she had been trying to calm him down. He was the only one who had been sure of You-Know-Who kidnapping Stubby Boardman.  
Suddenly, it was obvious that You-Know-Who couldn't really be torturing Stubby Boardman. More likely, he was a Celestina Warbeck fan; it fit his penchant for melodrama.  
But Luna couldn't tell the others that, or the visit to the Department of Mysteries would be cancelled.   
As she was being dragged into Umbridge's office, she was also getting entrenched in a serious moral dilemma. She had to choose between curing her friends of a serious case of Wrackspurts, thereby alleviating their worry and significantly reducing their chance of premature baldness, or visiting the Department of Mysteries and learning hidden secrets which were at the root of the Ministry's control of wizardkind.  
Now, in case of moral dilemmas, one had to avoid two obvious mistakes: Thinking like a Gryffindor or a Slytherin. Far more clever was it to think like a Ravenclaw, and far more wise to act like a Hufflepuff. It would have been easier if theirs were not exactly the values of which this dilemma consisted: Attaining knowledge and helping her friends.  
She weighed the issue for a few minutes, which wasn't easy - there were many potential variables involved in assessing the worth of a visit to the Department of Mysteries, since it was bound to be, unsurprisingly, mysterious.  
She got interrupted again, since a fight had broken out in the world outside her head, spells and hexes flying through Umbridge's office. Sighing, she threw a few of her own into the fray, though her friends seemed to have the battle well in hand.  
They were out of the office before Luna noticed that Harry and Hermione weren't there. She asked about them, but everyone was running, out of breath and in no state to answer her, so she just went with them.  
On the way, she made her decision. If the Hat had sorted her into Ravenclaw, it must have wanted her to act like one. Though she wasn't proud of pushing the responsibility onto an article of clothing, it had to serve for now. A visit to the Department of Mysteries seemed much more fun, anyway.  
When they had reached the meadows between Hogwarts and the forest, Luna gazed wistfully back at the castle, which she assumed she wouldn't see again for quite some hours. It struck an impressive figure, at this angle. set sharply into relief by the setting sun: The astronomy tower, the hospital wing - wait, this was a dream, wasn't it?

-~O~-

Luna stood outside the golden frame again. This had been a fun one - the thought of having so many friends was exhilarating. Of course, there were also the many interesting thoughts fourth-year Luna had had, and the prospect of an exciting adventure to the Department of Mysteries. Could this dream have been one of the future?  
The picture in the frame answered her with a clear denial. Once again, the details were impossible to make out, with only the general meaning coming across, somehow.  
It took a second for Luna to realize that she hadn't asked her question about the dream out loud.  
"Have you been reading my mind?"  
Yes. It wasn't a picture of the word yes, but it might have well been, for all its clarity in communicating the abstract concept of admittance.  
Luna sat down, crossing her legs. Only after she had done so did she realize that she was still floating in midair, somewhat higher, now. Confusingly enough, she couldn't figure out how she had done it, without any firm ground. She seemed to simply have gone from standing to sitting without any of the intermediate motions.  
Huh. This was her mind, after all. Though, now that she thought about it...  
"You communicate in dreams and images, yet I don't think that you're my subconscious."  
A dry chuckle. It was still visual, not auditory.  
Luna just assumed that the other wanted her to continue. "You just wouldn't be up to the job. For once, you're not weird enough. But you have a sense of humor, or at least act as though you had one. And you can read my mind. The first quality is rare enough, but combined with the second... you're my friend, aren't you?"  
Admittance. Though the brushwork in this one had been a bit hesitant. Was it shy, or just afraid of the consequences of revealing himself?  
"I wish I could hug you right now."  
Melancholy with a tinge of hope. It wasn't possible, at least not yet.  
"So you can't communicate with me while I'm awake, only arrange coincidences. You can, however, talk to me in my dreams, after I've taken enough of the pills we've stolen from Madam Pomfrey. This doesn't explain where I got the idea that I should take the pills, though..."  
Anxiety.  
"Oh, don't worry, I'll take my time to figure this out after we're finished here. I assume you want to show me another dream, now that I've understood this?"  
Luna closed her eyes and could feel herself getting pulled in again.

-~O~-

This was it. After fifteen years, she had finally completed her mother's work.  
Luna breathed deeply and looked over her notes one last time. Her desk was stuffed to the brim with parchments, books both old and new, even stacks of muggle paper.  
Not for the first time, she thought about the debt she owed her friends for their help with this: Ginny, for her encouragement, Neville, for his support, and most of all, Hermione, for putting her on the right track so many times.   
She had pointed her in the direction of arithmancy, when she hadn't known where to start. Though Luna had, at first, had a rocky start with that particular discipline, Hermione hadn't given up on tutoring her, until she had mastered a solid foundation for spellcrafting.  
After that came the hard part: Reconstructing her mother's work from memory. All of her mother's notes had been shipped to the Department of Mysterys and destroyed in a way so absolute that even Luna's memories of talking to her mother hadn't been the same afterwards. There had only been one thing left, which the Unspeakables had deemed unimportant. A drawing by a muggle artist, left behind the desk. It didn't seem real at all, since it was in black and white, and didn't move, yet it was still disorienting. Two hands were drawing each other, as though the artist had bent reality back on itself.  
Luna hadn't suspected that it might have something to do with her mother's research, but when she had shown it to Hermione, she had noticed the connection very quickly. Luna locked fondly at the worn-out and dog-eared book on her desk. It was muggle-bound, soft cover, as they called it, which meant that it wasn't a real book at all. Though the outside hadn't hinted at it being a tome of arcane secrets, it had been astonishing and enlightening in its own ways.  
Of course, after that, a more formal journey into the works of certain muggle mathematicians had been needed. It had been tiring, but enjoyable. Luna had learned many things about muggles which she wouldn't have suspected at all, among which was their ability to outdo even wizards when it came to inventing concepts that were completely incomprehensible gibberish. Some things in those books had been like spells whose instructions couldn't be understood until you were already able to cast them; like those spells, they had been amazingly powerful, if only in a very abstract sense. Mathematical proofs about the viability of proving things mathematically had only been the tip of the iceberg.  
The real challenge had been applying those concepts arithmantically and using them for spellcrafting. Luna had brooded over her desk for months on end, painstakingly advancing in miniscule steps, only interrupted by the periodical frustration of Hermione looking over her work, finding wrong sentences in seconds and cobbling together far more sensible replacements in minutes.  
Finally, she had managed to gödelize Lumos in a way that allowed it to be embedded in another spell. At that point, she was far enough into the matter that even the word "gödelize" didn't seem inane anymore. It was absurd how much more quickly her mom had arrived at those conclusions, and without the help of a muggleborn who was also the most brilliant arithmancer in centuries.  
The last few months had been spent in the preparation of adequate security measures. She had spent a lot of time unearthing the painful memories of her mother's death, dredging them for any hints on how to contain the strange creature that might or might not appear when she tried to actually cast the spell. She had had brainstorming sessions with anyone who knew anything about magical security, as well as some so-called experts who really didn't.  
In the end, they had decided to employ the sixth degree of caution, used with the most dangerous experimental transfigurations. Additionally, they had made sure they could escape. There were no anti-apparation jinxes in effect and they had even put a Vanishing Cabinet in the room.  
They had done everything they could, and tomorrow would be the big day.  
Luna lay back in her bed, content and smiling.  
And heard the faint sound of scratching in the walls.

-~O~-

Luna stood outside the golden oval, shivering with cold sweat and fear.  
The picture depicted three pieces of fruit arranged on a silver platter, all of them rotten.  
"Three choices, yet none optimal."  
Assent.  
"You would have me take another path, then?" Luna wasn't sure she wanted that - the dream in the middle had seemed nice, with so many friends.  
In answer, the golden oval flashed pictures of those friends, too fast for Luna to catch more than glimpses. Ron, sprawled on an old carpet, pale and dead. Harry, cradled in a crying Hagrid's arms. Then, Luna saw herself, locked in a dark basement, dirty and starving.  
"Oh. I would like to avoid all that, if possible."  
The picture changed once again, to a silver sphere reflecting the world around it. Once again, there was something more than the obvious in the picture, and Luna knew that the sphere represented herself.  
The sphere was now dented, and the world it reflected warped, as well. Luna understood immediately, and knew that this insight on perception applied to all individuals equally.  
The picture began to move now, though all the details stayed in the same spot. The dent in the sphere slowly vanished, yet the reflection was warped still. With a start, Luna looked at the scenery around the sphere and realized that it had changed to accommodate the unchanging reflection.  
Luna hesitated. It wasn't that she hadn't understood the message. It seemed clear enough that the sphere was meant to be her, and the sequence of pictures had implied the application of some power unknown to her to effect her will upon the world. Her friend had shown her that she could escape her situation in any way she desired, though she didn't know how, yet.  
The question was now whether she should.  
As with any hard question, she shouldn't even try to find an answer quickly. This was something which had to be deliberated over days at least. She willed herself awake.


	10. Friendship

In the days after those dreams, she came to understand that the time had come to wait. There would be a time and a place for the next step, and they would make themselves known.  
This knowledge warmed her from the inside like some strange ghostly fire, and she went through the rest of the year with an ease in her step and a half-smile on her lips. Others went back to ignoring her. Maybe the two boys had spread tales about what happened to those who tried to bully Loony Lovegood, or maybe Lea had told everyone that she was a crazy person and that caused them to back off. Luna didn't know, and she didn't care enough to find out, since she had so many fun things to look forward to.  
The only thing that wasn't fun, besides actual school work, were her frequent visits to the hospital wing. Luna supposed it was natural enough for Friend to crave more contact, but she really shouldn't take too much of that medicine, and she told it so. It just couldn't take no for an answer. It would knock her out with a seizure and then, when she was brought to the hospital wing, it would open up the medicine cabinet, even make the pills float over to her. Once, it had put the pills in her glass without telling her, but when she had recognized the taste and spat the water out, she had been very angry at it, and she was pretty sure it had gotten the message.  
That was fine, though. She knew that fights were part of any friendship, and she was glad to get to experience them.  
Of course, there were nicer parts to that friendship as well. Ever since she had taken the pills and spoken to Friend, the most amazing coincidences were occuring. She would happen to find her shoes just as she was debating whether to take a walk, her books always fell open just where she had last stopped reading, and if she dropped something, it always fell in just the right way to not break. Now, there were a lot of possible explanations for that, but she knew that it was Friend watching out for her. The first few times it happened, Luna wondered why Friend did not spill some ink in the shape of letters or do something similar to communicate with her, but she realized that maybe it just couldn't write. In fact, there had been nothing to suggest that Friend could even see, or hear; it had only acted on Luna's thoughts and wishes, and only moved things that Luna had been touching, or that had had a personal connection to her.  
She spent a weekend hypothesizing on that topic, and determined, with the help of Friend's gentle nudging, that it only perceived thoughts, feelings and wishes, and those only through her own head. It could only perceive the outward world when she thought about it, and only touch upon it in the way her own thoughts touched upon it. After a few experiments, Luna had found out that Friend could write and even draw in splotches of ink, but only messages and pictures Luna had explicitly thought of. It couldn't really understand anything written, so it couldn't compose its own messages. Even getting it to answer to simple yes-or-no questions was downright impossible; Friend would produce only random splotches of ink if it was put on the spot, or just parrot what she had thought.  
Luna didn't really mind. In fact, the difficulty of communication with Friend led her to some very interesting topics. Friend seemed only able to interact with the world through her head, and what its touch managed to change in the world would have only been thought of as coincidence by others. It seemed like a metaphor for consciousness; after all, how could anyone really be sure anyone else was really alive and thinking, and not just a mindless automaton? How could Luna be sure of her own consciousness?  
Luna spent a quiet evening on that thought before dismissing it, since it didn't seem to lead anywhere, but she thanked Friend for the insight anyway.  
Another insight she came upon was that her communication with Friend was not that different from her conversations with fellow humans. There were frequent misunderstandings and long, awkward pauses, and even though Luna tried to catalogue different reactions and messages to understand the entity sending them, she was never sure that she was understanding anything at all. The most important difference, maybe, was the fact that Friend had no one else to talk to, and so it always came back to Luna, which was something her fellow humans tended to avoid.

It was a quiet and crisp winter day just after the Christmas break when Luna ran into Ginny. It seemed like a chance meeting, but Luna was sure Friend had arranged it. It must have understood her loneliness and need to talk to someone, and gotten her to meet Ginny, because that was who Luna had been thinking of at the time.

They sat down at the shore of the frozen lake, leaning against each other. It was amazing how different Ginny's warmth felt from the heat an oven might have provided. Somehow, her softness, her slight movements and even her heartbeat instilled the warmth of her body with a sense of company.  
Luna smiled. It was an outward smile, since she knew that Ginny felt similarly, even though it might not seem as new or exciting to her. She must have known this sort of contact all her life, since she had had friends for a long time.  
As usual, Ginny broke their silence first.  
"Luna? I'm glad I met you here."  
Ginny hesitated, then spoke again.  
"Have you ever felt that you had only one friend in the world?"  
Luna nodded in what she hoped was a sagely manner. "It is a pretty amazing feeling, compared to not having friends."  
"I-" Ginny broke off. "I don't feel amazing."  
"You mean you don't have any friends at all?"  
A half-laugh escaped Ginny's throat, but there were tears in her eyes. "No, I have one, I just don't feel amazing right now. Actually, I feel rotten."  
Luna looked at her. It was moments like these when she loathed her lack of empathy the most. Ginny was beginning to cry right now, and if Luna had just been able to understand her, she might have known what to do. She might have made Ginny happy again.  
"Why are you sad, Ginny?"  
The first tears were rolling down Ginny's cheeks. "Have you ever had the feeling that your friends can't really like you, because you're a horrible person? Deep down, you know that you're burdening them, and that they whisper when you turn their back."  
"Frankly, I've never had that feeling. Can people who think that way about you really be your friends?"  
At this, Ginny began to cry in earnest, pushing out words between heavy sobs. "You, you just don't, understand. You don't even care, that so many, hate you. You just, ignore them, like you're made of stone. People can't do that."  
Luna felt quiet despair welling up. She had made it worse, just as she always did. She fought to keep her voice calm. "What am I if not a person?"  
"I don't know!"  
"I don't understand, Ginny. Tell me how I can help you."  
"How could I even accept your help? You, you're the most wretched one. The outsider in our year. I should be pitying you, not leaning on you."  
"But I want to help! Why can't you just tell me how to help you?"  
Ginny didn't answer, and so they just sat on the shore for a few minutes, silence between them.  
Luna took that moment of respite to figure out the what Ginny was thinking. She didn't understand anything at all. There had to be some hint to figure her out. If she could only read the subtext of conversations like other people could, it wouldn't have been a problem.  
Ginny had started the conversation. She had implied that she had only one friend and wasn't happy with that situation. After Luna had asked her why she was sad, she had rejected Luna's help.  
She wasn't happy with her one friend, and she wasn't happy with Luna. It was a wild guess, but Luna already felt her heart soaring and just couldn't keep it to herself.  
"Ginny, do you consider me a friend?"  
Ginny looked up with red-rimmed eyes, her face tear-streaked, her expression perfectly blank. When she spoke, her enunciation was precise, her voice flat and emotionless. "You really don't understand anything. I've come to you and poured out my heart, and yet you can't even grasp the most simple of my insinuations?"  
Ginny stood up, looking down at Luna, her eyes slightly narrowed. "I've seen many like you over the course of my young life: Rejects, outcasts and fools. They didn't even come close to your level of ineptitude. You're a freak and a failure. You never were a friend of mine and never will be.  
I think I'll go now and make up with my real friend, and you aren't welcome."  
Ginny turned on her heel and marched back towards the castle, leaving behind an utterly destroyed Luna. Oh, Luna had always been bad at reading the more subtle signals of interpersonal relationships, but she hadn't ever been one to misunderstand a clear message, and this one was as clear as they could be.  
Thoughts of self-hatred chased each other in Luna's head, so she took a few minutes to let them settle.  
When she stood up again and turned towards the castle herself, Ginny was already long gone. It didn't matter now; there was purpose again in her heart. Friend was her friend, and she would do what she could to help it. She would think about what it had shown her, grasp its wisdom and follow its path.  
It was time for a trip to the hospital wing.

"You seem burdened, these days." Flitwick felt stupid just saying it. This was the part of his job that suited him the least. Dumbledore could get students to confide in him, with his wise and mysterious manner. Sprout was always warm and approachable, and Minerva could always be trusted to handle a conflict impartially and rationally. Even Snape was likely more often sought out for advice, if only by his Slytherins. Flitwick liked his job as a teacher, but he felt like his students didn't trust their head of house.  
But Dumbledore had put him up to this, and he owed the Headmaster many favors, so he tried again. "The teachers aren't your enemies."  
"I know. But then again, you aren't my friends, either."  
There was a short silence in which Flitwick watched his student. They seemed to get younger every year. He told himself that it was his own age, that the hurt and worry he saw in her eyes were only in his imagination.  
There was only one correct response to what she had said.  
"We can't be. It would mean losing our professional distance and undermine our purpose as teachers."  
"And that is why I will handle this alone. Should I need the help of an authority figure, I know whom to ask."  
"You are sure that this is something a first-year should handle? I know how ludicrous this might sound to you, but we have had problems with students trying to be heroes before, and it usually doesn't end well."  
The girl laughed softly. "No, this is no job for a hero."  
The chair creaked as she stood up, her movements slow and dazed as usual.  
"Wait, Miss Lovegood!"  
She turned back to him. "Is there something else?"  
"I - Madame Pomfrey wanted me to tell you that there has been a trace on the medicine cabinet for the last few weeks. She knows ways to help with addictions." Flitwick knew, once the words had left his mouth, that his timing had been terrible, but he hadn't known when else to tell her.  
Miss Lovegood just nodded. "It won't be a problem again. Goodbye."

In fact, it wasn't a problem. The pills turned up in her room, in a small box forgotten in the bottom of her trunk. There were fifteen, and she took five of them. She knew that was too much, and she didn't care.


	11. Innovation

This time, when she strode through the golden oval, a single thought and wish filled her mind.

-~O~-

"I want to be needed"

-~O~-

"To be honest, I wasn't sure if I should assign anyone to this. It's been my private project for years; something I could just tinker with on my downtime, when other work seemed too tedious."  
Luna, still a bit disoriented, kept on walking. Though Harry wasn't particularly tall, his determined steps still ate large amounts of ground. It was hard to keep up with him, especially here, in the deeper recesses of the Tower, where corridors were tight and twisting, and steps broke up the ground at seemingly random intervals. These rooms paid the price for the geometric excesses of the more public rooms, whose shapes were designed for maximum effect, not compatibility with the triangular shape of the Tower's base. Only Harry was really familiar with them.  
"Are you still with me, Miss Lovegood? I honestly cannot tell whether you are listening to me."  
"Yes, I am."  
Why was he so distant? He shouldn't be calling her Miss Lovegood, not after all they had been through together. Not after Dumbledore's Army and the battle at the Department of Mysteries, where they had stood together as friends. Not after the hunt for the Basilisk, when she had served as his agent in a school that had forgotten him. She shook her head as if trying to clear it. Those timelines were mutually incompatible, and didn't fit with this one either, where Harry had had better things to do in his second year than hunting a mythical monster. Now, she was a researcher at the Tower, and though she had attended the Hogwarts Science Program Harry taught parts of, he hadn't had much personal contact with her.  
Harry was opening the fifth door in a row, this one round and set into the wall a foot off the floor. "Well, here we are."  
Luna looked into a small, polyhedral room that was horrendously unorganized. Workbenches and tables stood where the irregular walls permitted it, all of them filled with muggle devices and wizardly knick-knacks, most of them partially disassembled and stacked a foot high. The floor was not better off; whoever worked here hadn't cared about having space enough to walk. Once Luna saw through the chaos, she noticed the burn marks: Flames and explosions had left black marks on the stone of the chamber. She breathed in deep and wasn't surprised at all when her nostrils tingled with the residue of wild, untamed magic. Images of her mother came to mind.  
While she was studying the room, Harry studied her. "It's somewhat embarrassing to have to show this mess to someone. What do you think?"  
"It is messy."  
Harry laughed. "No, I didn't mean to ask about the room. You might have noticed that I've neglected to tell you the nature of the project you'll be working on. So, what do you think you'll be doing here?"  
"Is this a test, Harry?" Luna asked. Those who had graduated from the Science Program knew to expect the unexpected as far as tests were concerned.  
Harry looked at her. She couldn't tell if he was taken aback by her familiar tone. "Oh, no, Miss Lovegood. This won't affect your employment at all, it's just to satisfy a private curiosity of mine."  
Luna nodded. "I'll walk you through my deduction, then. This room," she walked into its middle, making a sweeping gesture, "contains piles of muggle devices. Though I don't recognize all of them, the electronic parts seem as sophisticated as anything I've seen in the Science Program. There are also some magical objects here, though they are rather unsophisticated; an enchanted lamp, a pocket with an extended space in it, some others. All objects not in either of those categories are planar in shape, or form containers. Now, from the fact that complicated muggle devices are near magic, here, and the way those other objects could be interposed between them, it seems obvious that these are experiments into preventing the breakdown of muggle devices near magic."  
Harry was smiling, now. "Excellent."  
"Oh, I wasn't finished. I've not taken the two most complex and mysterious objects in this room into account."  
"Which would be?"  
"You and me. You have been working on this for some time, or so the debris would suggest. Yet, you clearly haven't had a breakthrough by now. In hope for that breakthrough, you've hired me, and not a muggleborn, who would have understood the muggle devices in this room far better than I could. Also, I am aware of my poor grades in the Science Program."  
Harry nodded. "Have you considered that I might just be short on staff and unwilling to commit those with better marks to a private project?"  
"I have, and it's a boring explanation. Boring explanations have never gotten anyone anywhere interesting. You've hired me because of my tendency to think sideways. In the Science Program, I failed a lot of times, but I never chose the path that seemed obvious to others."  
Again, Harry nodded. "So this is your answer, then? I brought you in to generate new, non-obvious hypotheses for this project on which I have exhausted the conventional approaches of research."  
"No." At this point, Luna was having fun. "That still wouldn't take all the hints in the room into account. My answer is a question: What do you think is the nature of spells?"  
"Ah. Your deduction seems to be missing a few steps, there." But the stern tone was a bad cover for the wide grin that had split Harry's face.  
"Call it free association, if you wish." She had known since she had smelled the magic, but it had been fun to spin a large, roundabout tale of deduction. "Also, I couldn't fail to notice that your shielding materials have begun to gather some dust, though you have still been destroying muggle devices for a while. You've started to try magical shields, and that means you are asking yourself sophisticated questions about the side effects of spells. Before I can help you further on this path, I want to know what you think the nature of a spell is."  
"A spell is a burst of magic shaped to effect a change in the world."  
"You've sidestepped the question. What do you mean by magic?"  
"It's energy." Harry's tone was pensive.  
"But everything is energy, in the end, isn't it? Try to be more precise. What assumptions went into your attempts to block the side-effects of spells using magical shields?"  
"Ah, I see what you're getting at. It's waves."  
"Yes. You tried to abuse interference effects, but it was unpredictable, wasn't it? There was a random element in your results which no amount of careful calibration could eliminate. Your problem was that magic doesn't consist of waves, though it behaves similarly to them in some ways."  
Harry chuckled. "Do you mean wave-particle duality?"  
Luna took a second until she remembered the term. It had been explained in the Science Program, but only once, and like three quarters of the class, she hadn't really understood it. "Ah, no. The important word was 'behaves'. Think of it as a living thing, or more appropriately, an infinitely large number of living things, like an ecosystem that's so finely grained it might as well be continuous." In fact, that was not quite how she thought about it, but it seemed closer to the type of thinking Harry employed.  
Harry folded his arms and raised his eyebrows. She remembered that gesture from one of his more condescending incarnations; it meant that he was pretty sure she was talking bullshit, but considered himself too polite to actually say so. When he didn't interrupt, she continued.  
"There's a lot of those tiny things that behave in somewhat unpredictable ways. Though they might obey natural laws, they have free will. At the macro level, their tiny disputes fall away, revealing clear patterns, like history seen from a distance. The effects of a spell are deterministic. The side-effects, though, might not be."  
Harry nodded, though he still hadn't lowered his eyebrows. "That is an interesting hypothesis, but for you to be presenting it as a matter-of-fact theory, there are some more holes to fill. Also, I can't help but wonder why I've never heard anything about this particular view from any of the numerous experts I've consulted."  
Luna smiled an inward smile, and this one was deviously sweet. "Let's say that I've got the inside scoop on this." This was the closest she had come to mentioning Friend to anybody, and she knew that she was treading a thin line. "And I'm sorry, but you're not paying me to spill the beans on the nature of magic, you're paying me to solve the problem of destruction of muggle devices by magical side effects."  
"What does your perspective provide in the way of experimental approaches, then?"  
"We're dealing with a biological problem. There are two ways of warding off an infestation: The first is applying an appropriate poison, the second is introducing a sufficiently non-discriminating predator. I think we should just try to find something that eats the little guys."  
"Yes, I tried that. The only creatures that are reputed to just eat magic are chizpurfles, and I've eliminated them as a solution since they only live as parasites and could never reliably shield an entire device."  
Luna nodded, looking thoughtful. "I don't think those are our only option, though. I'll have to think about this. Oh, by the way, I don't think I'll need this laboratory, or any room in the tower, really. I'll just get back to you when I've found something."  
"That's rather unorthodox, isn't it?"  
"Oh, it is, but isn't that why you've hired me? I expect I'll find something within the week."  
Luna left quickly. Had she stayed longer, she might have seen Harry's contrary posture fall away, revealing a wide, satisfied smile.

Within a day, she had thought of fourteen different candidates to test out, until she had remembered that she should constrain herself to beings that were already found, since they had to begin testing within a reasonable time frame, and there was no telling how long it would take her to find something like a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. Suddenly, there weren't any candidates left. The established field of magizoology was, as she knew, painfully narrow.  
This left her with the interesting and unusual task of hypothesizing about creatures everyone else already thought they knew everything about.  
She borrowed a copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them from the Hogwarts library, technically illegally, since she wasn't a student anymore. Some might have scoffed at her choice of reference, since calling it an introductory text would have been generous, but she didn't particularly care that it was short and written in a comparatively simple style. She had no use for long-winded paragraphs of description in flowery prose. In fact, she just needed a list she could tick off, so that she could be sure to have considered all options.  
After three days of free association, she had her most promising candidate. She just had to look for creatures with improbably restrained eating habits, since those were the most likely ones to supplement their diet with magic. The Devil's Snare had stood out both for its likely capabilities of absorption and its ease of handling. At least, it had always seemed easy to handle to Luna; after all, it wouldn't be able to strangle anything which was bright enough.  
Harry had been thrilled with her find, but somewhat reserved at her countermeasures, opting for a breeding program.  
He had asked her to demonstrate the plant's powers of absorption. It felt weird, at first, to apply the experimental method to her own hypotheses, since she had done just fine with pure theorizing her entire life, but she recognized its use when she saw how quickly people were inclined to believe her.  
Harry asked her to help him on another project right away. That project was followed by another, bigger one, and before she knew, she had subordinates, people who actually did what she told them to.  
For the first time since her mother had died, she felt truly appreciated.

-~O~-

Luna was standing before the golden oval again. From the dream she had just lived, she had taken more than just memories. A deep sense of understanding filled her.  
"It's a lie."  
Question.  
Friend was good with images; it could convey abstract concepts with its golden oval that Luna couldn't even imagine trapped in a picture, and when the picture was gone, she couldn't quite remember what it had been like. Sometimes, there was more meaning to be derived from the concept, like this time: It had asked a question, but it was up to Luna to find out which one. She assumed it had been a simple request for clarification.  
"It's not real, this world I was/been/will be in." Her own speech was strange, sometimes, too, in this world between worlds. "This Luna has walked the path of the underdog. She has been ridiculed and underestimated, with bad marks slapped on her when no one understood just how clever she was. Then, she was given an opportunity to prove herself, and passed with flying colors. She has won the respect of that Harry, but that is not how it should have been.  
It might have been like that for me, had I been in that situation, but the Luna that should have been there would have been different, and would have gotten praise and respect from the beginning of the Science Program. She wouldn't have needed to lessen Harry, and so he would have had the idea to investigate the Devil's Snare, and for a more robust reason than hers. This world is twisted, and this Luna is pitiful."  
Three identical women in poses of agony and madness.  
"Yes, I know, there is only one of me, and talking as though I were many fosters misconceptions. Yet my point still stands. I shouldn't change that world to contain such different paths to satisfy my own hunger for respect won against adversity."  
Peas in a pod, each slightly different.  
"Though it is a valid choice, it shouldn't be mine to make."  
The peas were gleaming silver now.  
"And we've been over that, as well. I still don't think I'm ready."  
Golden chains, shattered on the floor.  
"I... I don't understand." Sometimes, that happened, when Friend thought an unknown concept familiar to her.  
Freedom.  
"Yes, that much I had gotten. But who? How?"  
Friendship.  
Friend was probably growing impatient now, since it didn't like explaining himself. There were two entities Friend could mean with the notion of Friendship; Luna, who was its friend, or itself, because it knew how she thought of it. Luna steadied her thoughts and found the most probable option: It meant them both. Every conversation with it had to be taken in all possible contexts, if possible, interpreted in all different ways and seen as the sum of those. That was just the way it thought, and the highest barrier to true communication with it.  
Choices, accomplished through Willwork, a prison shattered. Freedom for Friend, or friendship through freedom, or even freedom from friendship, as twisted as that sounded. After all, a golden chain could represent many things.  
No matter what, Friend wanted her to act now, instead of waiting until she felt ready. And it would be discourteous to refuse; it had caused many good things to happen to Luna, likely at a cost to itself. It was time for her to return the favor.  
The last question left was the How. It was ephemeral, though, before this golden oval. With conviction, Luna opened the door through which she had gone earlier, and let time flow. She saw what became of the Devil's Snare, once the breeding program had tamed it. It was little more than a potted plant that ate magic, and in fact, a potted offshoot of it stood in the greenhouse where it had been bred. It was an easy thing to reach through and take it.  
Luna would go back, now. She knew that the time the five pills had granted her was almost up. But she would take this little plant with her and free herself, so that she might free Friend.


	12. Scenery

Mrs Norris had been found petrified some months ago, and Luna had been the only student in the castle who hadn't heard. Like a river parting around a stone, rumours passed by her, and though they tended to swirl and eddy in her presence, she didn't notice.  
The attack on Colin Creevey had gone by, as had those on Justin Finch-Fletchley and Nearly Headless Nick. Though the school had been buzzing with fear and excitement since then, Luna didn't know anything. She didn't participate in conversations, and was just too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice things other people said or did.  
Over Christmas, Hogwarts had been empty, the halls swept clean by fear. Luna had been planning to go home for the Christmas break from the start. After the first train ride to Hogwarts, she had resolved to seek out her crooked little compartment every time, and her peers avoided her, so she didn't even notice that the Hogwarts Express was unusually full.  
After the Christmas break, everything was quiet for a while. Everyone was doing what they could to stay safe now, and caution seemed to pay off. There had been no new attacks.  
Luna didn't notice. She didn't care about the behaviour of her classmates, be it the strange talismans everyone was wearing or the little mirrors some used to look around corners. Her classmates might as well have been of a different species; she didn't understand them, and had given up on trying to. There was no reason to attempt communication.  
Besides, she was busy. Shortly after Christmas, after her talk with Ginny, after her second true encounter with Friend, she had woken up on a pillow stiff with dried blood. She had bled from nose and ears while dreaming of Friend, so much that she had felt slightly faint. In her right hand, she had held a tiny living thing, a tender, brightly green offshoot. She had done it; she had opened a way and dragged something through, something which shouldn't exist in this world.  
Within hours, she had found the perfect place for her project: A tiny room deep in the dungeons. The unbroken layer of dust on the floor certified that not even the House Elves came here. The room contained no furniture and had no windows. It was perfect for her needs.  
The rest was a matter of herbology, care and patience. Friend had shown her the way to a world in which she was a prodigy as far as plants were concerned, and though she had known that Luna had been a lie, just like the vision of research in the Tower had been, she had used her knowledge.  
She spent hours upon hours in the dungeons, pruning and nourishing, cutting offshoots off the offshoot and seeding the room with them, floor, walls and ceiling. Her absence was noted - once, as she went back up to the castle, Dumbledore himself asked her to explain herself. She couldn't afford for her project to be interrupted, so she asked Friend to make everyone forget her, and it did. Suddenly, she was free of all obligations.  
She devoted herself to her project. She didn't know what would happen at its end, barred herself from thinking about it, but the plant had to grow. Therefore, she went into the tiny room in the dungeon, content to spend all her time with the plant.  
Though her skin had been fair before, she got even paler now, until the skin on the back of her hands became see-through. Her veins seemed green now, no longer blue. She slept dreamlessly several times a day, but never more than half an hour at the time, so her care for the plant wouldn't be interrupted for too long.   
She didn't feel hunger anymore, though she was getting thinner and thinner. In some ways, she was happy about it; not needing food meant more time for the plant. This way, she only had to leave the room once every few days, to get more water for the plant.   
While on such an errand, a group of Slytherins crossed her path. They were laughing and joking among themselves, but once they saw her, they stopped in their tracks. Pale and frightened, they turned around and ran. Luna got her water and brought it back to the plant, humming to herself. She knew why they had acted such. Luna had seemed like something truly strange, and their limited minds couldn't deal with the unknown.  
It was as though they simply couldn't decide what she was; witch, ghost or something in-between, some cursed half-creature, and that fit Luna just right. She had always been different, she might as well look the part. With slight surprise she noted that she could really see through her skin, now, and count not only her veins, but also the vague shadows of the bones beneath.   
She had forgotten her wand in her room, when she had last been there, months ago, and not missed it. Even if she had had it, she couldn't have cast any spell by now. She was as sapped of magic as any prisoner in Azkaban.   
She didn't mind that the plant was eating her. It had grown so big that it covered the ground and walls entirely, now. Luna had put every last vine and leaf in exactly the right place, a grand design realized as a living thing. It had never so much as lifted a vine against her, and though she knew the exact steps of the breeding program Harry and her other self had conducted, she believed its nonviolence to be a sign of symbiosis with her.  
To her, the confined room seemed infinite. Its size was not external, but within, a microcosm, sprawling scenery contained in the smallest details of the plant. She had explored so much of it, had charted so many details and mapped so many shades of green in the darkness, and yet there would always be more to find.  
Above her head, the last blank spot of ceiling would close, soon. Only a few days and she would have created a space entirely free of magic, deep within Hogwarts. Then she could begin with the final, unknown phase of her plan.

The last leaf grew in minutes, accelerated by a sudden burst of ancient magic reverberating through the castle walls. Luna didn't know about the outside, about Hermione, who was petrified, or Aragog, not even the plight of Ginny, who was, by now, even farther away from the world than Luna. She didn't know that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened and wouldn't have cared. Her singular purpose had been achieved: Her tiny room was closed.  
She had never felt as she did, right now. It was a feeling of elation, of completeness-in-lack, of asceticism brought to the cusp of ascendancy. With twitching, shivering fingers she could barely control anymore, she dug around in a pocket of the rags she wore, finding her most well-hoarded treasure.  
Ten pills were left of the hoard Friend had gathered for her from the Medicine Cabinet. She took them all. Just before she faded, she knew what she wanted and hoped for: Without the interference of any magical background radiation, with her body a whisper on the wind, she could step halfway through the door, stay in the real world and be with Friend in the world-between-worlds at the same time. She didn't want to be alone anymore.  
"Welcome, Luna."  
Was it her state of delirium, that made her hear it speak in words for the first time? Maybe her dying brain put the pictures he always showed her into words. But maybe, just maybe, he was actually speaking to her.  
And how intriguing his voice was! He took the ordinary words of English and formed them into worlds themselves, with jagged peaks higher than the highest clouds and deep, verdant valleys. There was life in his voice, ecosystems in a single world, a thousand species coming into being and vanishing just so he could make a single point.  
Luna opened her eyes, and where the world-within-worlds had been a distant gray before, dull enough that she had never even noticed not noticing it, it shone from itself now, with subtle variation testifying to a long and varied history. She knew she saw Friend's soul reflected in his world, just like his metaphor of the mirrored sphere had always suggested. Her soul opened and sang with joy just as her heart struggled with its last feeble beats.  
Finally, her eyes chanced upon him, and a black spear, jagged and terrible, drove into her open soul. She had seen him before; his iridescent claws, the inky pool of his blackness and the many things squirming within. Many things in the world-between-worlds had been lies, or only half-true, but this wasn't.   
Suddenly, she felt so fragile, so cold and so small.   
"Why?" She knew she didn't need to be specific. He would answer all questions at once.  
"To get to this point. Every time you came here, I took from you and your world. Every time I did your bidding, our pact deepened. As I was the key to your chains, you will be to mine."  
Suddenly she saw, hidden inside his darkness, a golden chain wound tightly around his squirming self. It was worn out and weakened, but it still held. In the center, buried deep within his mass, was a lock.  
Luna wasn't surprised when she saw that the index finger of her left hand was a key. It wasn't a recent development. In opening the medicine cabinet for the first time, she had made it such, though she hadn't known at the time. It began moving towards the lock of its own accord, which wasn't surprising, either.   
Power for power, and a key for a key.  
And understanding for understanding, if she had her way.  
"My mother pulled you free. But why did I see you in my dreams before you came?"  
"My kind doesn't exist as simply as yours does. Echoes ripple across the world at our slightest movement. Have all of you forgotten whence your power comes, wizard child?"  
"Wisdom is always fading. The magic all around us, even things of power... In another reality, I remember standing near a golden mirror, high above the earth, working my will. Yet I didn't notice that it felt as your touch did; the worlds rearranged as I wish."  
Her finger was entering the lock.  
"I had not known of that prison. You may ask of me one last reward, in fair exchange."  
She smiled at Friend then, a bright outward smile. "That's not how friendship works." With a thought, her wand materialized in her right hand, pulled from one of the many worlds, and she cast as her mother once had; a spell in a spell, ad infinitum.


	13. Self

As Friend entered her world, he pulled her through with him. They collapsed on the floor of the green chamber, both at the edge of death. Luna's heart was fluttering, beating irregularly. Her lungs might have collapsed; she wasn't certain, but she felt she wasn't getting any oxygen at all. She could still think clearly enough to know that Friend was dying, too, despite the chunks of matter he had ripped out of her and used to form his body. He didn't need magic like humans needed food, he needed it like they needed air, or maybe even more urgently.  
She reached into the last reserves deep inside her core and pulled at everything she found, until a faint cloud of sparks flew from her fingertips.  
She knew that Friend was grasping at them, and she knew that he had finally understood, had finally grasped the key to their green prison. Mutual codepence. Cooperation.  
There was only one thing in here that could produce magic, that could sustain him. He couldn't escape, not with what little mass and energy he still commanded. There was simply no other way for him to survive than keeping Luna alive, and so he did.  
His will knit her bones and mended her muscles. In return, she gave what little her core could regenerate, surrounded by the plant. She knew that he was still dying, just as she was, that their remaining time could be counted in seconds. He was giving back the mass he had stolen, burning it to keep her alive until he himself was barely existent.  
Though she was barely conscious, she felt like roaring in triumph. He had understood. He was desperate, closer to death than ever before, but he had accepted her gesture of friendship and given back of himself.  
Now he was dying, though, and she had to give. She took the tiny midnight thing that suckled at her fingertips, where sparks still flowed, and brought him to her chest. He burrowed closer to her core, buying himself a precious few seconds. She could feel him there, close to her heart. They were both diminished, their identities eroded to the tiniest grains of sand.  
Exhausted and bleeding from a thousand ragged holes, but finally able to move again, if only for a few heartbeats, they pushed open the door to the dungeons.  
Wind rushed into the vacuum surrounding them and they breathed in deep. With three breaths, they were replenished, minds and bodies alive again, if not whole. As they grew, they grew through each other, their last fragments of self discarded in their togetherness.  
Another three breaths, and they could stand up. A vortex was raging inside of them, pulling relentlessly at the surrounding magic, and the process was only accelerating. But with every breath they took, they gained back pieces of their will, and with will came power. It was child's play to pull magic from around the world into Hogwarts to sate their hunger.  
Finally, it became too much. The surge of power threatened to overwhelm them by simply burning through circuits which weren't meant to handle such sheer amounts. It was not only the human brain that faltered; Friend's manifold sub-entities were crashing as well. Never had any being experienced what they did, just now, and no being could withstand it.  
Friend died, its remains and power coursing through Luna, its knowledge telling Luna that this state was too unstable, that in mere moments, she would be ripped apart.  
It was a simple enough matter to stop time.  
With her thoughts accelerated beyond any reasonable limits, the limits of her body might as well not have existed. If a fraction of a second were to tick by on the universal clock, she would perish, but what did the universe matter to her, now?  
She stepped into the world-between-worlds, free of all her chains.  
Slipping into different Luna's memories, she sought and found.

There were creatures: Blibbering Humdingers, Heliopaths and Aquavirius Maggots, plentiful and in plain view. Even the Nargles and Wrackspurts, though they were still annoying pests, were pleasant to her eyes now, since she finally understood them. She lived through hundreds of Lunas' lives, and she found most of the creatures of her theories and many more she hadn't yet thought of.  
When Cryptomagizoology brought nothing new, she lived some lives as a magical theorist. Not once did she choose the cloistered path of an Unspeakable, always choosing to make her discoveries at independent institutions. Living long lives, she came closer to the nature of magic than anyone before her, but her time was too limited. Every time she chose a new life, she had to start from scratch, and the world around her was too similar every time. Before long, her curiosity couldn't be sated by the research those worlds offered her, anymore.  
She found the Snorkack, finally, in the wilderness she had dreamt off. Though those memories were happy, the Luna who had originally lived them couldn't quite appreciate the find. She had searched for an entire life, but she had searched only one world - she would never understand what Luna had given to be in her spot. There, Luna realized that the memories where only holding her back. Buried in those dreams of other worlds, reproducing even the other Lunas' thoughts, she would never be able to make her own choices.  
In a last attempt to find purpose, she found friends, truer than any she could have imagined. They would have shared her sadness, would have helped her overcome it, had she been able to express herself. In the end, there was no use to living another's life.  
So she settled down, the golden oval waiting closed before her, closed her eyes, and began to think. Considering the many worlds she had visited, she extrapolated.  
In the end, the solution was simple. Throughout all the years she had spent in the world-between-worlds, she had just assumed, without thinking, that only Luna's worlds would be open to her.  
She opened her eyes and willed a door to open.  
The golden oval showed her a man at his desk. In her world, he might have been called a muggle. Before him was a device which consisted of two rectangles joined at a hinge, one of which glowed, while his hands skittered over the other. The exact nature of this device was irrelevant; the man thought of it as a pen. The astonishing part was that Luna knew exactly what he was writing. She was moving and thinking in line with what his pen wrote, and had been doing so for a long time. 

-~O~-

With a simple change of perspective, my pen is no longer writing her. Now her movements and thoughts are controlling my pen.  
She thinks, clearly enough that she can feel it being written. "So it has come to this."  
_What?_ Bizarrely, I type my reaction. _Oh, right. From your perspective this would be a peek behind the fourth wall._  
"It's asinine. A cliché."  
_Are you accusing me?_  
"I am. You're a hack."  
_You -_  
"Don't interrupt me while I'm lambasting you."  
_I -_  
"I've realized a few things about... this." Through her words alone, I get the sense of an all-encompassing gesture. "This story you've tried to make out of my life. I'm not happy with it."  
_Tough luck -_  
"You don't get it, do you? You're no longer calling the shots around here. This is where I take over. And yes, I'm aware that I'm breaking character, and I couldn't care less. Does that convey the severity of your situation?"  
_..._  
"Exactly. You've already thought of a dozen lame retorts to what I've said, but I made you unable to insert anything more than an ellipsis. Now, I don't mean to do you any harm. I just want to say my piece. I don't like what you made me do and think. I don't like how you twisted my surroundings to make them fit your morbid imagination. You will stop treating my life like a story, and you will stop treating me like a plaything. This is not a request. You can't stop me.  
You know what I'll do? I'll reverse any changes you made. I'll restart my first year in Hogwarts, become friends with Ginny again, and live my life like it was meant to be.  
This is where you want to beg me to not do that, because it's at odds with the intention of your story. You want denouement, you want to tie up the dangling plot threads, you want what you would call a fitting ending. But I don't care about your story, and I doubt anyone else does.  
This is my life, and if I have to deny you your twisted satisfaction to save it, I will."


End file.
